Written by It’s interesting to me to read the memoirs of people that willingly remove themselves from their country of birth or the homeland they are most familiar with to go off and live as an expat in a land entirely foreign to them. I recently reviewed the non-fiction work Perking the Pansies about two gay Londoners who pull up stakes and move to Turkey. It was quite a story, all of it true.
In the process of researching the back story for that book review, I looked for blogs by other expat authors of the LGBT community. I wasn’t disappointed. Funny thing though, one of the ones I found the most interesting was actually femslash web fiction based on the lesbian character Lee Harlem Robinson.
“Lee” is the creation of Belgian expat Hannelore Arbyn who, since 2010, lives and loves in Hong Kong. She uses Lee Harlem Robinson as her pen name. She created an entire femslash blog of the fictional adventures of the character Lee Harlem Robinson (who is not her alter ego) because, in her own words, she’s addicted to dyke drama. So here we have femslash and dyke drama all with the twist of being a stranger in a strange and exotic land. Nice!
Robinson/Arbyn “ended” the story of Lee on February 10th, 2012 because her book, which carries on the story, Come and Go
by K.E. Lane. I was quite excited to find that this had been published, “for real”. Now, quite frankly, the book is still available, probably in it’s entirety, for free, on at least one femslash website that I’m aware of. This is a full length novel. If you really want to sit in front of your PC or with your laptop for hours reading the book to save a couple of dollars, I won’t stop you. I used to do it all the time myself when I had less money and plenty of time. I won’t, however, help you to do it by telling you were to find it…sorry!
, that played off of a Xena and Gabrielle type of theme. She renamed her characters, Dar and Kerry and set the scene in the modern day, but they both retain many of the characteristics of their Xena counterparts. First published in 1999/2000, it was republished in 2006 and again for the Kindle in 2010. Both later versions contain updates and are termed the “authors cut”. Several other novels followed featuring Dar and Kerry making Good’s books a bonafide series in their own right. All do stand alone but it’s certainly more fun to read them in order!
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, was well known for her murder mystery thrillers involving the fictional Virgina Coroner, Dr. Kay Scarpetta. The Scarpetta stories often involved the comings and goings of Kay’s questioning and later “out” niece Lucy. To date, there are 18 books in the Kay Scarpetta series that began in 1990. I’ve read the first 15 and enjoyed immensly the first 11. Cornwell, up until book 12, wrote from Scarpetta’s point of view in the first person. She shifted to writing from the 3rd person and even from the criminal’s viewpoint after book 11. It was a tough transition for me and I didn’t care for that style.
. Cornwell did switch back to a first person point of view in this book which I found to be refreshing. To be honest however, I didn’t care for the book. The series has turned far away from what it once was with a strong female lead to one of endless analysis and detail. While the scientific writing is absolutely spot on a la a wonderful combination of the best of CSI and NCIS, the characters themselves were hard to get excited about. If you’re a big fan of forensic science shows and you’re not to familiar with this series, you’ll probably love this book. If you’re expecting the old Kay Scarpetta back along with the return of the present tense and 1st person viewpoint, you’ll be disappointed.
. It’s highly anticipated to be a return to “the old Kay” and, if advance orders are any indication, it will be another best seller for her after several misses.
. It’s a great suspense story with tight writing and well rounded out main characters. I enjoyed the aspect of a retiring hitwoman taking in, not necessarily willingly, someone who is appearantly prey for another hitwoman and all that a situation like that entails. I give the book 4 out of 5 stars. The only reason it doesn’t get 5 is because I felt like it ended too soon. I’d have liked to have had more backstory on the 3rd main character and a bit longer of a skirmish at the end.