Under The Mink: A Novel

Under the Mink: A Novel

Amazon.com Review Devotees of the lesbian pulp romances of the '50s and '60s will want to sink into this smoky noir thriller set in Greenwich Village in the years just after World War II. Blackie Cole is a tuxedo-wearing butch whose soulful singing at the Candy Box, a Mafia-run nightclub, attracts a host of swooning regulars, as well as a lively mix of uptown types, from successful, secretly kiki actresses to rich gay men to straight couples out for a peep at the queers. None know that it's Blackie's bad luck in love that makes her songs so powerful. Her beautiful, hard-drinking lover, Renee, a stripper, has just moved out of Blackie's apartment and into an upscale brothel run by the nefarious Lucille. But between the mob on one side and the cops on the other, Blackie has more to worry about than her aching heart--especially when she stumbles on a corpse in the men's room of the Candy Box. The faults of this plucky first novel are simply the faults of the genre that it mimics: stock characters and overheated prose. But Blackie and her immediate circle are well drawn, and her dilemma is satisfyingly resolved.--Regina Marler New York City, 1949. At the Candy Box Club, three steps below the street, the show is about to begin. But in this club, the world is upside down. Emcee Blackie Cole is Blanche Cohen, the chorus line is led by a stunning dark-eyed boy named Titanic, and the only thing protecting the performers from the social reformers is Stevie, the kingpin of the mob's downtown operation, whose hand moves from the till to the pockets of the police. When a young gay man is murdered in the club, only Blackie cares enough to find out why. Richly detailed, Under the Mink is both a boldly entertaining picture of the lesbian and gay subculture of pre-stonewall New York, and a first class period mystery complete with gangsters, crooked cops, and notorious madams.Lisa Davis's writing has appeared in Queer View Mirror 2, and Early Embraces II. among others. She lives in New York. From Publishers Weekly In the netherworld of Greenwich Village 1949, it's drag queens and hookers against mafiosi, crooked cops and other assorted thugs, in Lisa E. Davis's Under the Mink. When a gay man from a wealthy publishing family is murdered in the restroom of the Candy Box Club cabaret, drag king Blackie Cole gets caught in a web of danger and intrigue. Davis captures the decadence of New York's pre-Stonewall gay scene and the constant abuse that the men and women who comprised it were subjected to. The strength they find in one another while being scapegoated by the media, the police and just about everyone else is inspiring. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Blackie Cole, a talented, scrabbling lesbian singer in a late 1940s Greenwich Village drag queen cabaret run by a mobster, finds a beautiful young gay guy dead in the men's room, even sees the murderer leaving. The mobster, fearful of scandal killing his business, swears her to silence, takes care of the body, and pays off the police. Blackie eventually tells the boy's equally beautiful sister, though, so her world begins to disintegrate: she antagonizes her boss, falls for the sister, and narrowly escapes the murderer. A moment or two of graphic sex, plenty of violence, and unconventional but realistic characters make this first novel a winner for larger historical mystery collections and gay fiction collections. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Davis animates a world in which gangsters run sleazy nightclubs with names like The Candy Box Club and pay off crooked cops with wads of cash. And where the cops are paid somewhat differently at the local whorehouse, where the most popular "goil" was once the girlfriend of Blackie, a singer who's now the Candy Box's hot draw (and who also happens to be a woman in drag). And where the club's gangster owner is a backer of the