Stripped for Inaction
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Author: Brian Freeman
Title: Stripped Genre: mystery Four decades later, her name still stirs a flame of desire in the men who knew her: Amira...Amira! She strode the stage of the Vegas Scheherazade Casino like a goddess, her glowing body a summons to all imaginable earthly delights. In death, though, she was no different from a thousand other showgirls. Only her memory lives on - her memory, and the aging casino she made famous in both life and death. Amira... Jon Stride's first day on the job as a Las Vegas homicide detective was a string of surprises. His first case turned out to be the execution of minor Vegas celeb MJ Lane; the ne'er-do-well son of famously reclusive billionaire Walker Lane, who'd been a Vegas regular forty years earlier. And as for Stride's new partner Amanda Gillen? Well, let's just repeat what Lou Reed said so well: "Plucked her eyebrows on the way, shaved her legs and then he was a she..."¹ A-MAN-da, indeed. Stride's off-the-job booty-call partner Serena Dial had her own homicide to work on, the hit-and-run killing of a nine-year-old boy. But then the killer car was found, and Serna's offhand glance at an old publicity photo revealed that there just might be a connection with the long-ago murder of Amira - just as his father connected the death of MJ Lane and Amira. Oops. Looks like there's a serial killer - a cold-blooded, highly skilled sociopathic serial killer - on the loose, taking out the relatives of people connected (however remotely) to the death of Amira. Their cases blended, Serena and Stride discovered themselves working as a beleaguered team, ever one step behind their cunning opponent. Never mind that it was clear who would be his next victim: Claire, the gorgeous lesbian daughter of casino owner Boni Fisso, who just might have been the man who killed Amira. Or loved her. Or had her killed. Whatever: hey - it was Vegas. Guarding the luscious Claire, though, put unbearably pressure on Serena. After all, she'd once had a lesbian affair herself. Could she remain true to her heart of hearts, Jonny, or would there be some nice hot girl-on-girl action to distract the reader? Bet you can guess... and bet you can guess that there will be a couple of whiplash plot twists, too. After all, Brian Freeman's on the job. Remember the old joke about the guy who says, "Doc, it hurts when I do this"; to which Doc replies, "So stop doing it"? So why did I read another book by Freeman after slogging through the corny Immoral? Simple: I'm a glutton for punishment - and wanted to save you the trouble. In actuality, where Immoral was simply a four-hundred-page pastiche of hackneyed plot points; Freeman's newest, Stripped, shows some originality - not much originality, but some. There's not a lot new about the cold case angle - it's been done to death in the past couple of years. The whole serial killer on some kind of strange mission of revenge is the basis of more books in the genre than most libraries can hold. The Army Ranger type assassin is pretty well beaten into the ground by now, too. So what's original? In fact, Freeman's main claims to originality probably aren't terribly original, either - it's more that he's imported them from some low-key version of "Penthouse Forum." The lesbian love scene (oh, come now, you didn't know it was coming?) was well-nigh inevitable, especially since both women are total hotties. Come to think of it, Freeman might well be a poster boy for LGBT-friendly writers, because he also has a pair of gay life partners (now up in their sixties) and the not-quite-completely transgendered Amanda. Freeman's experience with lesbians and the transgendered must be different from mine, though - every transgendered woman I know is rather dowdy and only a small percentage of my lesbian acquaintances are complete knockouts. Guess he did his research on-line (if you know what I mean -leer- ). Oh, and by the way? I got the pun in the name of Walker Lane. I hope Freeman knew it was a pun... Besides depending on sex to sell his plot instead of just writing a better plot, Freeman also manifests problems with continuity (a definite no-no in the mystery game) and also mediocre research. For instance, a plane flying from Vegas to Vancouver does not cross the Rockies, and Stride's Mormon lieutenant is highly unlikely to have a sister who "did publicity for the mayor's campaign." The whiplash-inducing plot twists are the worst of all, though. When Freeman elevates a flat character to the role Amira's killer, it's all over but the shouting - especially when he "surprises" us with the current identity of the killer (maybe it's just me, but I wasn't a bit surprised by who he turned out to be). Lots of dirty sex and wicked whiplash-inducing twists just can't cover up a faltering plot. Overall, Stripped is better than Freeman's first, but not that much better. ¹ lyrics from "Take a Walk on the Wild Side" © 1972 by Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground all content copyright © 2014 by scmrak
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