needs more demons?

It may partly be “too many books in the same series back-to-back” syndrome, but Freeze My Margarita felt much more tired and formulaic than the previous book in the Sam Jones series, Black Rubber Dress, and several particulars bugged me:

• The opening scene is set in a D/s club. It seems to be set there purely for presumed shock value; not only is it irrelevant to the plot, it doesn’t provide any insight into the characters (in fact, I thought it contradicted character development elsewhere).
• The device used to isolate the pool of suspects in this novel is Jones’ affiliation with a theatrical production. This worked much less well for me than the previous novel’s similar device of having Jones present for the unveiling of one of her sculptures at a bank. I think I know at least as much about theatres as I do about investment banking, and the notion that a theatre production would use an up-and-coming sculptor’s mobiles as set dressing was less credible than a young sculptor’s work being installed in a bank lobby. The presumption that suspects must be involved with the production also seemed flimsy.
• The exposition about the theatre’s fly system is unwieldy. It’s obvious Henderson wouldn’t spend as much effort detailing it as she does if it weren’t going to be a plot point. But since it’s mostly crammed into dialogue, it’s a little hard to follow. A diagram or two would have helped. (”Look, I’ll just draw it out for you,” Bez said impatiently, as he reached for a biro. [see Fig. 1]”)
• There are several characters with “H” names, including Hugo, Helen, and Hazel. Hazel plays Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the play being put on. Henderson also switches freely between referring to characters by their names, and by the roles they are playing. “Dream” is certainly a confusion-suffused play, so maybe this is deliberate — but it doesn’t seem to be applied to any particular thematic purpose.

On the bright side, there are some indications that it may be a transitional novel for Jones’ character. And the book really comes to life for me when Jones talks about the artistic processes involved in her sculptures. She even wonders if she’s compensating for a lack of success in some of her mobiles by making several that are fundamentally similar, so that they impress by quantity if not quality. It’s tempting (although possibly unfair) to read some artistic anxiety on Henderson’s own part into that.

needs more demons? Ayup.