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Death Club by Claire McNab. Tallahassee, FL: The Naiad Press, 2001, 215 pp., $11.95 paper. ISBN 1-56280-2671-4.
Nine Nights on the Windy Tree by Martha Miller. Norwich, VT: New Victoria Publishers, 2001, 239 pp., $10.95 paper. ISBN 1-892281-11-2.
Recently, our family expanded with the (full-time) addition of our eldest granddaughter, 11-year-old Alex. Our life has changed slightly dealing with the mood swings and schedule of a pre-pubescent middle schooler: from getting up in the pre-dawn to get to school to the bedtime ritual of reading aloud to each other. I am struck by the similarity of genres and themes between Alex's books and the ones that sit upon my nightstand. The self-help type stories of Judy Blume books which deal with growing up are comparable to the self-help-cum-confessional autobiographies (how Ellen and Melissa survived loving the wrong [read: straight] women and their very public breakups) to the perennial series on which most of us started our serial detective/mystery habit: Nancy Drew and the stack of lesbian detective/mystery stories I love.
I am struck by the similarity between th Nancy Drew mystery set on a golf course and involving Nancy in a golf match (The Haunted Bridge) and the thirteenth Carol Ashton mystery, Death Club, which also involves a golf match.
Of course, the Nancy...