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Emma Victor #2
She Came in a Flash
Emma Victor, the witty, intrepid heroine of the acclaimed She Came Too Late, is hot on the trail of Lana Flax, her best friend's kid sister, a onetime physics prodigy turned member of the yellow-clad cult of the Vishnu Divine Inspiration Center. When Lana finally turns up--dead--Emma begins to wonder if cult members turn on with something stronger than yogurt and higher consciousness.
310 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
55 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
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 20, 2021
I really disliked the framing device that started this novel, so it took me a while to warm up to it. I genuinely didn't think it would sort itself out - there didn't seem to be a compelling reason to begin the story in media res(?).
But once we got out of the white cell where our heroine was being kept, the book improved hugely. Emma Victor, east-coast lesbian, has moved west and is still learning how quickly her laundry dries. She's got herself a little bungalow with built-in flour canisters, a date for some casual tennis, and a women's benefit festival to organise.
Mary Wings is the epitome of what I have come to call feminist detective fiction: independent, right-on women who own their homes, earn their incomes, and rely on their answering machines rather than their secretaries for important messages. Emma is political but a bit exhausted, enlightened but still a product of her time, and world-weary enough to both be cynical about the latest radical happiness cult and also question that cynicism.
Besides being all the above, this actually functions very well as a light noir detective novel. Wings captures the sun-bleached atmosphere of 80s California in just the same way that Sue Grafton does with Kinsey Milhone. Outer suburbia, encroaching development, endless highways, pretentious restaurants, hippie culture gone mainstream - it's the logical next step to Chinatown and The Long Goodbye.
An Indian guru cult that has its claws in a once-stratospheric punk icon as well as Emma's friend's sister explores the intersection of self-exploration, social alternatives, and rampant capitalism, and the whole thing comes out to something remarkably coherent and properly enjoyable. And I even think the framing device worked out for the best.
Absolutely on par with the early Graftons, but unfortunately the unapologetic lesbian and feminist themes were always going to relegate this to a subculture instead of the mainstream.
But once we got out of the white cell where our heroine was being kept, the book improved hugely. Emma Victor, east-coast lesbian, has moved west and is still learning how quickly her laundry dries. She's got herself a little bungalow with built-in flour canisters, a date for some casual tennis, and a women's benefit festival to organise.
Mary Wings is the epitome of what I have come to call feminist detective fiction: independent, right-on women who own their homes, earn their incomes, and rely on their answering machines rather than their secretaries for important messages. Emma is political but a bit exhausted, enlightened but still a product of her time, and world-weary enough to both be cynical about the latest radical happiness cult and also question that cynicism.
Besides being all the above, this actually functions very well as a light noir detective novel. Wings captures the sun-bleached atmosphere of 80s California in just the same way that Sue Grafton does with Kinsey Milhone. Outer suburbia, encroaching development, endless highways, pretentious restaurants, hippie culture gone mainstream - it's the logical next step to Chinatown and The Long Goodbye.
An Indian guru cult that has its claws in a once-stratospheric punk icon as well as Emma's friend's sister explores the intersection of self-exploration, social alternatives, and rampant capitalism, and the whole thing comes out to something remarkably coherent and properly enjoyable. And I even think the framing device worked out for the best.
Absolutely on par with the early Graftons, but unfortunately the unapologetic lesbian and feminist themes were always going to relegate this to a subculture instead of the mainstream.
June 19, 2020
On a whim, Emma Victor moves from Boston to California. She is still involved in women’s issues so she takes a job with an old friend to work on a contract dealing with a benefit concert. As she is working on this, her best friend from Boston calls and asks help in finding her sister, Lana, who the family hasn’t heard from in six months. Coincidently, Lana is living in a religious com¬mune that has ties to the benefit concert Emma is working on. The commune is run by a charismatic leader named Vishnu, but just after Emma has a serious talk with Lana about her family’s concerns, the young woman’s lifeless body washes up on a beach near the commune’s mansion.
I’m not particularly interested in cults, but I have enjoyed other lesbian PIs who become involved in them. Jen Madden infiltrates one of these in Death Has No Face and Amelia Ellis’ Nea Fox always seems to be stumbling into one. So it must be the way that Wings describes the Vishnu Commune that makes it seem kind of boring. The truth is that I can’t really point a finger at why I don’t like this novel more than I do.
Like She Came Too Late, this sequel is competently written—well-written, even. Some of Wings’ descriptions are spot on and her observations are cogent and wry and witty at the same time. Yet I continually found myself wondering—at least for the first three-fourths of the novel—why I was still turning pages. The truth is something that defies criticism. Wings and I are simply not on the same wavelength. To me, her writing simply doesn’t spark joy However, Wings is in good company; I don’t care for Flaubert, either, nor his eponymous character, who is coincidently also named Emma.
High marks, though, for interesting and unique plot twists and strangely likeable characters. Despite my personal feelings, I suspect that the Emma Victor series should hold a fairly high place in most people’s lists of top lesbian PI novels. Final Rating: 3.5
Note: I read a scanned version of the first Plume paperback printing of this book, whick I borrowed from The Internet Archive.
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.
I’m not particularly interested in cults, but I have enjoyed other lesbian PIs who become involved in them. Jen Madden infiltrates one of these in Death Has No Face and Amelia Ellis’ Nea Fox always seems to be stumbling into one. So it must be the way that Wings describes the Vishnu Commune that makes it seem kind of boring. The truth is that I can’t really point a finger at why I don’t like this novel more than I do.
Like She Came Too Late, this sequel is competently written—well-written, even. Some of Wings’ descriptions are spot on and her observations are cogent and wry and witty at the same time. Yet I continually found myself wondering—at least for the first three-fourths of the novel—why I was still turning pages. The truth is something that defies criticism. Wings and I are simply not on the same wavelength. To me, her writing simply doesn’t spark joy However, Wings is in good company; I don’t care for Flaubert, either, nor his eponymous character, who is coincidently also named Emma.
High marks, though, for interesting and unique plot twists and strangely likeable characters. Despite my personal feelings, I suspect that the Emma Victor series should hold a fairly high place in most people’s lists of top lesbian PI novels. Final Rating: 3.5
Note: I read a scanned version of the first Plume paperback printing of this book, whick I borrowed from The Internet Archive.
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.
January 5, 2012
She Came in a Flash starts slow but eventually I got caught up in the story and it finished strong. Even though this is printed in 1988 it could happen now. Cults, feminism, kidnapping, murder. Enjoyable.
June 23, 2010
This book's strengths are the narrator's witty voice and great descriptions of characters and settings.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews