Ruth
Sims,
author of the best-selling The Phoenix
is taking a break
from her own writing to reviewDispatch to Death
by
Martha Miller
| Ruth
Sims' Phoenix
Available through
Ingram or Midpoint Trade Books Phone orders: 800-497-0037 • Email orders: Orders@Midpt.com Author's email: rsims@writerscollective.org |
| Martha
Miller is a Midwestern
writer whose short fiction and articles are widely published.
She
has had 4 plays produced and won several writing awards. She
writes a monthly column Martha [lesbian] Living in which she
gives helpful household hints to lesbians. Dispatch to Death
is
her third book published by New Victoria. Her next book Tales
From the Levee is under contract to Southern Tier books and will be out
in the fall of 2005. |
Dispatch to Death
by
Martha Miller
New Victoria Publishers
2003
222 pages, $12.95
ISBN: 1892281201
There are times a girl just can't catch a break.
Case in point: Trudy Thomas, cab driver. One ordinary, soggy Illinois day Trudy picks up a rain-drenched fare, a mysterious young Hispanic woman named Anita Alvarez, and drops her off near the governor's mansion. It was the last ordinary day Trudy would have for a long, long time.
A routine cleaning of Cab Number 4-which is lavender for reasons that have nothing to do with being gay-turns up a key. And then all hell, as they say, breaks loose.
Within days Trudy finds a co-worker murdered in the ladies' room, Cab Number 4 broken into, and her own personal information missing from the office files. It's all downhill from there for the hapless Trudy. Before it's over, she is shot, hospitalized, stalked, threatened, and locked in a car trunk God knows where. And that's just scratching the surface of the perils Trudy ("I'm not a hero. I'm a cab driver") faces in this lively mystery.
I really like Trudy. She's an ordinary woman struggling to support herself and her mutt dog on what she makes as a cab driver. That she is a lesbian is neither a big secret or a big deal. She loves her Harley and her dog, and asks for nothing more out of life than to get by and be left alone.
Dispatch to Death is a great get-wrapped-up-in-a-quilt-on-a-chilly-evening book, with a cup of hot chocolate and marshmallows on the table beside you.
Martha Miller's writing is crisp, clear, and unmuddled. The story is written in first person, a notoriously difficult technique, but she does it well. Her characters are three-dimensional and real, and the plot is a dizzying series of twists that will keep the reader guessing until the low-key, satisfying conclusion.
My only criticisms are few and very minor indeed. I really didn't need to know that Trudy likes to wear boxer shorts. And the frequent appearance of brand names dropped into the text quickly became distracting.
Minor glitches aside, I highly recommend Dispatch to Death to anyone who wants a fast-moving, enjoyable mystery to read. It would also make a darn good TV movie. I see Joan Cusack....