Callahan's Lady

Rating:
Summary: You will laugh and be aroused....well worth a read.
Review: Sit back and kick off your shoes, it isn't a long book but well worth your time. Callahan's Lady, introduces you to a number of well developed characters, and laughs by the page. If you enjoy using your brain, laughing and just plain enjoying yourself, it is a great book. If you are already a fan of Callahan's, you will be in second heaven. I could say so much more, but I am not one for 'spoilers'. Just read it!

Rating:
Summary: Laughing In and Out of Bed
Review: What if there was a brothel where the employees were treated like artists instead of meat for hire? Where the clients might come just for conversation and a place to relax in a friendly, convivial atmosphere? Where the House is clean, laid out for comfort, and specially designed to handle everyone's own variant of what they desire most in sex? Where the emphasis is on satisfying the psychological needs of everyone, clients and employees, not just the physical ones?

That place exists, somewhere just across the river from the UN building, peopled by a very living set of characters. Lady Sally, proprietress, has some very demanding standards for her employees and just as stiff a set for her customers, though that doesn't mean that talking dogs, cross-dressing multi-millionaires, con men, and KGB spies can't get in. And the Lady has a very empathic heart, picking up a street hooker in dire straits and turning her into a woman that anyone would love to be around. Maureen was that poor woman, and this book is a set of experiences that she has as an employee of the House. Each of the episodes reads like a fairly long short story, including the incident of the incredibly potent man, the lady whose every word is an absolute command to all those in hearing distance, the gorilla gangster, best known for poking donut holes in a certain part of a man's anatomy, who finds out just what friends are good for.

Spider laces each of these stories with his patented brand of humor, from some truly groan-inducing puns to absolutely howling, fall-on-the-floor gags. Shining throughout these stories is his attitude that people are good, and good people go out of their way to help those in trouble. Heart-warming, touching, and yet there is some definite food for thought here. Our society delegates those who engage in sex-for-hire to the very bottom of the social ladder ands treats sex as a given ability rather than an art form than can get better with practice and training, which seems to be a very odd attitude towards an action that is not only necessary but can be one of the most fulfilling exercises of any person's life. Spider shows, by his emphasis on the positive, just why this attitude does not make sense, and just how much it costs in unnecessary human misery.

The stories here are only distantly related to Spider's Callahan's Bar series and can be read with full enjoyment without any knowledge of the other books, even though Mike Callahan is Lady Sally's husband, as here he only makes a few cameo appearances. Though if you find you enjoy this book, then you should certainly try some of the Bar series for some more romps through Spider's wacky, macabre, humor-filled, and endearing universe.

Although this book revolves around the actions in a brothel, Spider never gets graphic in his depiction of the happenings therein, though the subject matter does preclude handing this to pre-pubescent children. But the theme of this book is such that a mature teen-ager really should read this, and see what can be, rather than the dismal reality of what is.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

Rating:
Summary: Laughing In and Out of Bed
Review: What if there was a brothel where the employees were treated like artists instead of meat for hire? Where the clients might come just for conversation and a place to relax in a friendly, convivial atmosphere? Where the House is clean, laid out for comfort, and specially designed to handle everyone's own variant of what they desire most in sex? Where the emphasis is on satisfying the psychological needs of everyone, clients and employees, not just the physical ones?

That place exists, somewhere just across the river from the UN building, peopled by a very living set of characters. Lady Sally, proprietress, has some very demanding standards for her employees and just as stiff a set for her customers, though that doesn't mean that talking dogs, cross-dressing multi-millionaires, con men, and KGB spies can't get in. And the Lady has a very empathic heart, picking up a street hooker in dire straits and turning her into a woman that anyone would love to be around. Maureen was that poor woman, and this book is a set of experiences that she has as an employee of the House. Each of the episodes reads like a fairly long short story, including the incident of the incredibly potent man, the lady whose every word is an absolute command to all those in hearing distance, the gorilla gangster, best known for poking donut holes in a certain part of a man's anatomy, who finds out just what friends are good for.

Spider laces each of these stories with his patented brand of humor, from some truly groan-inducing puns to absolutely howling, fall-on-the-floor gags. Shining throughout these stories is his attitude that people are good, and good people go out of their way to help those in trouble. Heart-warming, touching, and yet there is some definite food for thought here. Our society delegates those who engage in sex-for-hire to the very bottom of the social ladder ands treats sex as a given ability rather than an art form than can get better with practice and training, which seems to be a very odd attitude towards an action that is not only necessary but can be one of the most fulfilling exercises of any person's life. Spider shows, by his emphasis on the positive, just why this attitude does not make sense, and just how much it costs in unnecessary human misery.

The stories here are only distantly related to Spider's Callahan's Bar series and can be read with full enjoyment without any knowledge of the other books, even though Mike Callahan is Lady Sally's husband, as here he only makes a few cameo appearances. Though if you find you enjoy this book, then you should certainly try some of the Bar series for some more romps through Spider's wacky, macabre, humor-filled, and endearing universe.

Although this book revolves around the actions in a brothel, Spider never gets graphic in his depiction of the happenings therein, though the subject matter does preclude handing this to pre-pubescent children. But the theme of this book is such that a mature teen-ager really should read this, and see what can be, rather than the dismal reality of what is.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)