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My only previous encounter with Michael Craft was one of bemusement as I read the highly camp, highly arch cozy that was DESERT SPRING. So BITCH SLAP came as rather a shock to me on several fronts. Aside from a screamingly camp rash of face-slapping in small-town Wisconsin, the book is several shades darker than Craft's series starring theatre director Claire Gray. There's a link between the books, as we learn that hero Mark Manning's nephew Thad Quatrain (well, he'd need a weird name to fit into the cozy series!) has gone off to study at the exclusive Palm Springs college where Claire has set up a theatre department. Back in Dumont, Wisconsin, journalist Mark and his partner Neil are pillars of the community. Mark has been running the family newspaper, the Dumont Daily Register, for several years, while Neil is a successful architect. Mark is also on the board of two local companies, Quatro Press and Ashton Mills. So he's interested in talks about a merger between the two. Meanwhile, Neil is designing a swanky new house for Ashton's chief executive Gillian Reece. But when the deeply unpopular Reece is found dead after a row with Glee Savage, one of Mark's reporters, some dodgy business dealing floats to the surface. Even Reece's hippy-dippy husband Esmond seems delighted to see the back of her, and there's a queue forming behind him of people she'd treated badly. Small-town America seems incredibly relaxed about the number of gay men and lesbians frequenting the place -- there's not only Mark and Tim, but also sheriff Doug Pierce and Lucy Haring, Mark's second-in-command on the newspaper. The book provides Mark with some harsh dilemmas -- I didn't see the final twist coming and for one awful moment thought it was going to be a cop-out. But Craft doesn't short-change the reader and this lends the ending some real tension. As soon as I'd got to the end, I rushed out and bought the first in the series. There's enough to suggest that BITCH SLAP could well be the final book to star Mark Manning -- on this evidence it's a series that will be missed, and one where I look forward to going back and filling in the gaps.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, September 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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