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About
The witty, queer accidental detective of the Epitome Apartments is back. While helping to solve a community murder, she also needs to convince police that she didn't revenge-kill the man who took everything from her
The nameless amateur sleuth of The Adventures of Isabel and What's the Matter with Mary Jane? has often said that death is too good for Lockwood Chiles - who is in prison for killing her beloved partner, Nathan, and her close friend Pris - and makes no secret that she hates the man who massacred her shot at happiness. So when Chiles ends up dead in his cell, it's no wonder she becomes a prime suspect.
Meanwhile, an aggressive band of men in military-adjacent garb turn a string of assaults against nameless's unhoused neighbors into full-bore murder right behind the Epitome Apartments, and she rashly promises to help bring them to law.
As if that's not enough, unscrupulous parties are scheming to strip her of her inheritance, money she and Nathan had intended would address the city's lack of harm-reduction services and low-income housing. Now it is nameless's mission to clear her name and to hold her tattered community together, all while she's coming apart herself. Our wily amateur sleuth is suspected of murder. When one of her unhoused neighbors is kicked to death she becomes involved in a second investigation as well. Our detective is surrounded by the voices of the dead - but can any of them answer the urgent questions of the living?
Candas Jane Dorsey is the award-winning author of Black Wine, A Paradigm of Earth, Machine Sex and Other Stories, Vanilla and Other Stories, Ice and Other Stories, and in the Epitome Apartments mystery series, The Adventures of Isabel and What's the Matter with Mary Jane? She is a writer, editor, former publisher, community advocate, and activist living in Edmonton, Alberta.
On the top shelf of my bedroom closet, I have a box that sings to me.
When I say this, when I say that I have a box in my closet that sings to me (or, more properly, that I have, in my closet, a box that sings to me), I do not mean a music box, an automaton, a Victrola, a phonograph, a record player, a stereo, a Discman, a Walkman, a television, a computer, an .mp3 player, a Smartphone with Bluetooth, a smart thermostat: I do not mean anything fantastical or even science-fictional except in the sense of that 2003 William Gibson quote in the Economist.1
The box is rectangular and deeper than it is wide, and it was carved by a lover, with love, to fit the shape of my hands, and in it is a sheaf of a technological marvel called smart paper that records in many ways - moving and still visuals, voices, text.
On that paper are the voices, work, and images of Nathan Bierce, who was the dearest love of all my dear loves so far, and the voices, notes, and a few images of Priscilla Jane Gill, who was a rediscovered college friend - and also, on some, there is the voice, work, and face of their killer, Lockwood Chiles, my worst enemy.
I am haunted by the voices of these dead.
I've already told the story of how I got the box, the paper, and a heartful of grief.2 It's also the story of why on my bookshelf I have a very creepy dead-and-taxidermied cat yclept Micah the First, and why twining around my feet as this story begins were not one but two very non-ghostly, very living cats: my old tortoiseshell-and-white calico Manx buddy Bunnywit and Micah Five, an elegant Abyssinian with a secret past.
Not-so-secret, actually, in these days of global media, but all three of us have long since had our fifteen minutes of fame. Our story is so last year.
Or so I thought.
Ha.
1. "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." William Gibson, The Economist, December 4, 2003
2. What's the Matter with Mary Jane, the second of the books I've written about my adventures, the first being The Adventures of
The nameless amateur sleuth of The Adventures of Isabel and What's the Matter with Mary Jane? has often said that death is too good for Lockwood Chiles - who is in prison for killing her beloved partner, Nathan, and her close friend Pris - and makes no secret that she hates the man who massacred her shot at happiness. So when Chiles ends up dead in his cell, it's no wonder she becomes a prime suspect.
Meanwhile, an aggressive band of men in military-adjacent garb turn a string of assaults against nameless's unhoused neighbors into full-bore murder right behind the Epitome Apartments, and she rashly promises to help bring them to law.
As if that's not enough, unscrupulous parties are scheming to strip her of her inheritance, money she and Nathan had intended would address the city's lack of harm-reduction services and low-income housing. Now it is nameless's mission to clear her name and to hold her tattered community together, all while she's coming apart herself. Our wily amateur sleuth is suspected of murder. When one of her unhoused neighbors is kicked to death she becomes involved in a second investigation as well. Our detective is surrounded by the voices of the dead - but can any of them answer the urgent questions of the living?
Candas Jane Dorsey is the award-winning author of Black Wine, A Paradigm of Earth, Machine Sex and Other Stories, Vanilla and Other Stories, Ice and Other Stories, and in the Epitome Apartments mystery series, The Adventures of Isabel and What's the Matter with Mary Jane? She is a writer, editor, former publisher, community advocate, and activist living in Edmonton, Alberta.
On the top shelf of my bedroom closet, I have a box that sings to me.
When I say this, when I say that I have a box in my closet that sings to me (or, more properly, that I have, in my closet, a box that sings to me), I do not mean a music box, an automaton, a Victrola, a phonograph, a record player, a stereo, a Discman, a Walkman, a television, a computer, an .mp3 player, a Smartphone with Bluetooth, a smart thermostat: I do not mean anything fantastical or even science-fictional except in the sense of that 2003 William Gibson quote in the Economist.1
The box is rectangular and deeper than it is wide, and it was carved by a lover, with love, to fit the shape of my hands, and in it is a sheaf of a technological marvel called smart paper that records in many ways - moving and still visuals, voices, text.
On that paper are the voices, work, and images of Nathan Bierce, who was the dearest love of all my dear loves so far, and the voices, notes, and a few images of Priscilla Jane Gill, who was a rediscovered college friend - and also, on some, there is the voice, work, and face of their killer, Lockwood Chiles, my worst enemy.
I am haunted by the voices of these dead.
I've already told the story of how I got the box, the paper, and a heartful of grief.2 It's also the story of why on my bookshelf I have a very creepy dead-and-taxidermied cat yclept Micah the First, and why twining around my feet as this story begins were not one but two very non-ghostly, very living cats: my old tortoiseshell-and-white calico Manx buddy Bunnywit and Micah Five, an elegant Abyssinian with a secret past.
Not-so-secret, actually, in these days of global media, but all three of us have long since had our fifteen minutes of fame. Our story is so last year.
Or so I thought.
Ha.
1. "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." William Gibson, The Economist, December 4, 2003
2. What's the Matter with Mary Jane, the second of the books I've written about my adventures, the first being The Adventures of