cover image Lost Daughters

Lost Daughters

J. M. Redman. W. W. Norton & Company, $24.95 (319pp) ISBN 978-0-393-04028-9

With its plethora of subplots and varied characters, this fourth installment in Redmann's Micky Knight series is an ambitious work. When Micky's well-to-do physician girlfriend, Cordelia James, must visit the coroner's office to identify a former lesbian patient who has been brutally murdered, the death appears to be an isolated incident. But matters take a twist after another lesbian patient turns up dead. Meanwhile, Micky is busy working on two missing-persons cases: in one, a mother looks for her estranged daughter; in the other, an HIV+ drag queen searches for his biological mother. Micky's complicated investigations unearth numerous closeted skeletons. The death of two uncles brings a few revelations about Micky's enigmatic past as well, provoking her to search for her own mother, who abandoned her nearly 20 years ago. Micky's diggings inadvertently lead her straight into the boudoir of powerful, closeted society matron Suzanna Forquet and her old-moneyed husband, Henri. The novel is spiced with sarcastic humor, and Redmann carefully ties together her various plot lines, but even the neatness and the wit don't quite relieve the book of the burden of its characters' self-conscious struggle with Life Issues. Trodding a familiar path of family dysfunction, closet politics and unrequited love gone awry, this mystery ultimately winds up as an unappealing mix of lesbian group therapy and gumshoe kitsch. (July)