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Angel Dance: A Thriller
"Kat is a Chicano detective who can fight her way through anything -- the U.S. Marine Corps, CIA espionage, California swimming pools, S & M bars, even rape -- anything except her passion for the beautiful Angel Stone, a best-selling feminist author certain people are out to destroy..." A thriller from the fabled Daughters Publishing Company. The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing labels this important work as the first "self consciously feminist mystery."
259 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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June 18, 2020To fully understand Angel Dance you have to be at least a little familiar with the socio-political paranoia that existed in the liberation underground of New York and California in the 1970s. It would also be nice if you had studied the work of any of the Cornell School of writers, which included Thomas Pynchon, Richard Fariña, and David Shetzline. Beal, who was married to Shetzline, is the least well known of this group. At least she is right now.
Like the work of Pynchon, Beal’s Angel Dance is very dense, but it’s also very dark and, at times, brutal. Kat Guerrera is a young, hip journalist for a small community weekly in New York City who is offered a job with Angel Stone, an up-and-coming feminist scholar, as a . . . what? Possibly some kind of bodyguard; Angel has been getting threatening letters. But like much of the rest of the book, even the job Kat is hired for is ambiguous and cloudy. The truth is, it’s difficult to understand what the hell is going on in the book—not some of the time, but most of the time. Is Angel Dance a mystery? Does Kat become a detective? If so, what is she investigating and why? It seems that even she doesn’t know: “I wondered (how many times now?) why I had gotten involved, why any of this meant a damn to me.”
Despite its difficulty, this is an important book. For one thing, it is thought to be the first lesbian detective novel in literature. For another, Beal’s description of American feminism in the mid-1970s is unparalleled. The woman can write. Phrases like this one let you know that you’re not on the chicken farm any more: “I’d lost most of the transcontinental drift in my brain except for a ringing as if my skull were a brass bowl being worked on by an arc-welder in bedroom slippers.”
And of course Kat does know why she is searching, why she is risking her life for someone she barely knows. She loves Angel; but what’s more, she sees Angel as a symbol, a feminist model for the future, and she will do anything to protect her and to give her time to finish her important work.
Angel Dance reminds me of Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, which also has a protagonist that is searching for something that she isn't even sure exists. But Beal is not squeamish about getting her characters dirty and where Pynchon’s descriptions are hallucinogenic, Beal’s are ultrarealistic. In her investigation of Angel Stone's life, she either experiences or uncovers rape, murder, incest, drug smuggling, and a host of other unpleasantries.
I don’t expect a lot of people to read Angel Dance—especially based on this review—and few of those who do read it will enjoy it. I don't care. It's a book that needs, and deserves not only to be read, but to be read twice and studied. I’m disturbed at how the men that hung around Pynchon—Shetzline, Fariña, Rudy Wurlitzer and others—were lauded by the critical press while Beal was virtually ignored; or in the case of Angel Dance, totally ignored. I have read the others; Shetzline is instantly forgettable, Fariña overrated and sexist, and Wurlitzer just kind of silly.
This generation has the ability—and the responsibility—to bring this virtually forgotten literary gem back into the public mind. Where it belongs.
Note: I read the first Daughters printing of this novel.
Another 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.
Like the work of Pynchon, Beal’s Angel Dance is very dense, but it’s also very dark and, at times, brutal. Kat Guerrera is a young, hip journalist for a small community weekly in New York City who is offered a job with Angel Stone, an up-and-coming feminist scholar, as a . . . what? Possibly some kind of bodyguard; Angel has been getting threatening letters. But like much of the rest of the book, even the job Kat is hired for is ambiguous and cloudy. The truth is, it’s difficult to understand what the hell is going on in the book—not some of the time, but most of the time. Is Angel Dance a mystery? Does Kat become a detective? If so, what is she investigating and why? It seems that even she doesn’t know: “I wondered (how many times now?) why I had gotten involved, why any of this meant a damn to me.”
Despite its difficulty, this is an important book. For one thing, it is thought to be the first lesbian detective novel in literature. For another, Beal’s description of American feminism in the mid-1970s is unparalleled. The woman can write. Phrases like this one let you know that you’re not on the chicken farm any more: “I’d lost most of the transcontinental drift in my brain except for a ringing as if my skull were a brass bowl being worked on by an arc-welder in bedroom slippers.”
And of course Kat does know why she is searching, why she is risking her life for someone she barely knows. She loves Angel; but what’s more, she sees Angel as a symbol, a feminist model for the future, and she will do anything to protect her and to give her time to finish her important work.
Angel Dance reminds me of Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, which also has a protagonist that is searching for something that she isn't even sure exists. But Beal is not squeamish about getting her characters dirty and where Pynchon’s descriptions are hallucinogenic, Beal’s are ultrarealistic. In her investigation of Angel Stone's life, she either experiences or uncovers rape, murder, incest, drug smuggling, and a host of other unpleasantries.
I don’t expect a lot of people to read Angel Dance—especially based on this review—and few of those who do read it will enjoy it. I don't care. It's a book that needs, and deserves not only to be read, but to be read twice and studied. I’m disturbed at how the men that hung around Pynchon—Shetzline, Fariña, Rudy Wurlitzer and others—were lauded by the critical press while Beal was virtually ignored; or in the case of Angel Dance, totally ignored. I have read the others; Shetzline is instantly forgettable, Fariña overrated and sexist, and Wurlitzer just kind of silly.
This generation has the ability—and the responsibility—to bring this virtually forgotten literary gem back into the public mind. Where it belongs.
Note: I read the first Daughters printing of this novel.
Another 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.
October 1, 2024
The striking, direct prose is an effective ballast for the dizzying and meandering plot. Even when I couldn’t parse what exactly was going on with protagonist Kat and her compelling circle of “socio-politico-sexual-intellectual deviants” and their enemies, it was a thrill on the sentence level.
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August 16, 2021DNF. I tried, but it was a little too specifically dense for me.
November 6, 2021
Pretty sure this a work of art
September 18, 2025
Bought a while back because I heard it was like Pynchon. And yeah, I guess. Really, really, really, really (really) bad Pynchon.
January 21, 2013
отлично ставит в перспективу как минимум "калифорнийские" романы Пинчона - "Лот 49", "Вайнленд" и "Внутренний порок" + дает развернутый комментарий к "V.": это тот срез контркультурной субкультуры, который располагается под радарами стереотипного восприятия Америки 1960-70-х гг. созвучий с ТРП настолько много, что очевидно - они с Мэри Бил творят в одном литератукрном пространстве
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July 17, 2009unread,lesbian feminism,lesbian novel,Daughters Inc.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews