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Rating: 
Summary: Tales of the City set in P-Town, pre-HIV days
Review: I first read these books back when they were first published, and still pick up extra copies whenever I chance upon them in used bookstores. Glad they have re-released them! Daniel and Clarrise are fun friends who spend a lot of time together getting into typical friend trouble. (oooh, he's cute, which one of us does he want?) Their gay man-straight woman friendship rings very true to me. The other characters in the series also are well-defined and interesting. These books hold up well as nostalgia for the fun-loving days pre-HIV and play on the party-town atmosphere of Providence Town. Fun summer reading!
Rating: 
Summary: Slight But Amusing
Review: This is book three in the Clarisse Lovelace/Daniel Valentine series of mysteries set in Boston and environs, and it is easily the least of the bunch.Alydne (actually two writers under pseudonym) just coasts with this breezy story of the murder of a vituperative gossip columnist, featuring a cast of characters that includes a woman so entranced with American geography she makes sandwiches in the shapes of all fifty states and a pair of arguing, TV wrestling-obsessed lesbian lovers. As usual Clarisse steals the show from everyone else. She is funny and bitchy but in a very entertaining way, and in SLATE she settles in firmly in her ambition to be an attorney. Daniel is a bit more fleshed out in this third novel and he's given some very funny lines, but he still remains something of a shadow next to the fiery Clarisse. For my money COBALT is the best entry in the Aldyne cycle. It is a farce nearly epic in hilarity and wackiness, while at the same time delivering the goods as a mystery. SLATE is just a mildy amusing interlude, a practice pitch for the last book, CANARY.
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