What do you think?
Rate this book
Emma Victor #1
She Came Too Late
'She was a warm body... I didn't want to know her. And I didn't want to notice the small black charred hole in the back of her trench coat. I grabbed a wrist. It was warm but there was no pulse. Not that I could feel...'
It's been a long hot summer. At the Women's Hotline, Emma Victor is struggling under the burden of too many calls and too many government cuts. Then she gets a cry for help she simply can't refuse. Reluctantly Victor agrees to break the rules and meet her client. There's only one problem: the woman's already dead...
It's been a long hot summer. At the Women's Hotline, Emma Victor is struggling under the burden of too many calls and too many government cuts. Then she gets a cry for help she simply can't refuse. Reluctantly Victor agrees to break the rules and meet her client. There's only one problem: the woman's already dead...
197 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
1 person is currently reading
145 people want to read
About the author
Mary Wings
23 books16 followersIn 1973 Mary Wings made history by releasing Come Out Comix, the first lesbian underground comic book. She may be best known for her series of detective novels featuring lesbian heroine Emma Victor. Divine Victim, Wings' only Gothic novel, won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Mystery in 1993
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 15, 2015
I have read several of Mary Wings' "Emma Victor" mysteries. She is a super writer who crafts interesting characters, wonderful plots, and has the marvelous gift of language and images that populate the best of noir thrillers. The series takes place in both Boston and San Francisco, and she does equal justice to both cities in weaving their charm, color and character into her stories.
March 30, 2018
Very Women's Press, so much so that I kept forgetting it was American and imagining the characters dashing around London visiting each other and their clinics and hotlines. The only unEnglish thing about it was all the driving and car-owning.
I had quite high expectations of this one. Although it's a Women's Press from the 80s, the praise on the front and back of this book was heavily complimentary and implied that the mystery and its telling would be on par with Chandler. This, disappointingly, I did not find to be the case.
It was too lightly told and the sentences ran on too much to feel hardboiled. It suffered occasionally from that problem all sub-par detective novels have, the inability to hide gross coincidences. A couple of extremely timely encounters prove instrumental. I never felt that she got under the skin of the problem, or under the skin of why our heroine felt the need to solve it. Everything happened at a calm, smooth remove.
I had quite high expectations of this one. Although it's a Women's Press from the 80s, the praise on the front and back of this book was heavily complimentary and implied that the mystery and its telling would be on par with Chandler. This, disappointingly, I did not find to be the case.
It was too lightly told and the sentences ran on too much to feel hardboiled. It suffered occasionally from that problem all sub-par detective novels have, the inability to hide gross coincidences. A couple of extremely timely encounters prove instrumental. I never felt that she got under the skin of the problem, or under the skin of why our heroine felt the need to solve it. Everything happened at a calm, smooth remove.
Read
June 18, 2020This is a competently written, pretty well-thought-out mystery, but for some reason it won’t make my favorites list. Let’s see if I can figure out why.
Emma Victor is currently working as a staff member in a woman’s crisis center hotline. A woman she has spoken to only briefly is murdered and Emma feels the need to find out who did it. This is good; a woman’s life has been taken and justice (which seems to be held up at the D.A.’s office) must be served. So Emma gets caught up in the politics of a women’s clinic—and in the arms of the clinic’s head research physician, Dr. Frances Cohen. Again good; Frances is a more believable and well-drawn character than most love interests in lesbian fiction. But other than that. . .
I think what disturbed me most about the book was the point of view: first person obsessive. It reads like I did this, I did that, then I went for a walk. Everything that Emma describes she describes with such detail that you want to scream. Now I know that this is fiction, but most—not all—of the details were so minor that no one would have noticed them, much less remember them later. And most—not all—are irrelevant to the story. I feel that Wings could have spent her time better sculpting the mystery and the motives instead of dropping little grains of minute observation into the narrative.
The motives, as I hint above, are iffy and almost incomprehensible, at least to me. Yes, I can understand the cover up, but not the motive behind what has been covered up. So too, although Emma is certainly no dummy and her heart is in the right place, I’m not sure what Dr. Frances Cohen sees in her that makes her fall in love after less than a handful of meetings. And several of the clues to the mystery that set Emma going, come from either dreams (hers or a friend’s) or from séances. Even the catchword in the book’s title (which is repeated throughout the series) is misleading; although there is sex in the book, it does not contain the descriptive orgasmicism I had half expected.
A secondary character, Sue Martinez, is one of the most interesting in the novel. Another potential love interest, she is rejected by Emma after trying to come on to her while she is stoned. Later Sue moves to California to dry out (she is a drug addict and a blackmailer). It seems that Emma will move to California herself in the second book in the series. I would be interested in seeing if she sees Sue again, and what will happen to Dr. Frances. I’m not 100 percent sure, though, that I want to know enough to actually read the book.
Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 930 other lesbian mysteries by over 310 authors.
Emma Victor is currently working as a staff member in a woman’s crisis center hotline. A woman she has spoken to only briefly is murdered and Emma feels the need to find out who did it. This is good; a woman’s life has been taken and justice (which seems to be held up at the D.A.’s office) must be served. So Emma gets caught up in the politics of a women’s clinic—and in the arms of the clinic’s head research physician, Dr. Frances Cohen. Again good; Frances is a more believable and well-drawn character than most love interests in lesbian fiction. But other than that. . .
I think what disturbed me most about the book was the point of view: first person obsessive. It reads like I did this, I did that, then I went for a walk. Everything that Emma describes she describes with such detail that you want to scream. Now I know that this is fiction, but most—not all—of the details were so minor that no one would have noticed them, much less remember them later. And most—not all—are irrelevant to the story. I feel that Wings could have spent her time better sculpting the mystery and the motives instead of dropping little grains of minute observation into the narrative.
The motives, as I hint above, are iffy and almost incomprehensible, at least to me. Yes, I can understand the cover up, but not the motive behind what has been covered up. So too, although Emma is certainly no dummy and her heart is in the right place, I’m not sure what Dr. Frances Cohen sees in her that makes her fall in love after less than a handful of meetings. And several of the clues to the mystery that set Emma going, come from either dreams (hers or a friend’s) or from séances. Even the catchword in the book’s title (which is repeated throughout the series) is misleading; although there is sex in the book, it does not contain the descriptive orgasmicism I had half expected.
A secondary character, Sue Martinez, is one of the most interesting in the novel. Another potential love interest, she is rejected by Emma after trying to come on to her while she is stoned. Later Sue moves to California to dry out (she is a drug addict and a blackmailer). It seems that Emma will move to California herself in the second book in the series. I would be interested in seeing if she sees Sue again, and what will happen to Dr. Frances. I’m not 100 percent sure, though, that I want to know enough to actually read the book.
Note: This review is included in my book The Art of the Lesbian Mystery Novel, along with information on over 930 other lesbian mysteries by over 310 authors.
June 13, 2022
For only 192 pages, it felt like a 300 page hurdle. Maybe it needed more time with an editor, maybe it's just Wings' style, but I didn't quite click with Emma or the plot. I didn't mind her deceptions or hijinks, I loved her futch energy, but I don't know. Something just didn't click. Maybe a little bit of that is because whenever Emma used "dyke" it was typically derogatory? However, I'm always a fan of lesbian fiction that includes social issues of the time; despite being fiction, these types of books can be used as time capsules of the community and the injustices they endured long before us baby gays.
January 26, 2019
She came too late is definitely one of the more interesting books i have read. The characters are amazingly crafted. The main character is Emma Victor who is investigating a murder which was more that she was prepared for. She is soon caught up in a mystery linking a women's clinic, a yachting accident, drug trafficking and much more. The ending was written perfectly.
December 26, 2019
Narrada en primera persona, y ambientada en Boston, la historia comienza cuando Emma Victor, que atiende una linea de ayuda, recibe el llamado de una mujer que pide verla. Cuando acude a la cita, la encuentra muerta. Se inicia así una típica historia policial al mejor estilo hard boiled, donde la protagonista denota en su caracter y en su proceder, claras reminiscencias chandlerianas.
July 16, 2022
Okay idk if I was just really tired whilst I was reading this (likely) but plot-wise I was quite lost for a lot of this. Also, one character was just not developed at all and I was left feeling kinda dissatisfied with her. That being said, I did enjoy the writing - it was funny and easy to read.
March 24, 2023
La trama se siente muy artificial, como si las mayoria de las situaciones y diálogos estuvieran escritos convenientemente, no se siente como una trama natural, seria una buena historia si no se leyera de esta manera
February 10, 2017
Confesaré que me costó trabajo decidirme a abandonar esta lectura pero llegué a la mitad y no iba hacia ningún lado. Así que mejor ahí la deje.
July 29, 2020
Reread this book a few days ago. Not bad really. The plot jumped about a bit but I liked Emma and that a,ways helps.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews