Kat Guerrera

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Created by M.F. Beal

“To be a woman is to be a revolutionary”
— Kat

Talk about firsts.

The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing tagged M.F. Beal‘s ground-breaking 1977 novel, Angel Dance as the first “self consciously feminist mystery,” while it’s generally considered to be the first PI novel to feature a lesbian as the hero, as well as the first PI novel to feature a Chicana as the hero.

First. First. First.

Unfortunately hardly anyone’s heard of it. Okay, it was initially put out by a small feminist press (Daughters, Inc.) and has rarely been reprinted since, but it was little read then or even now.

Not that it’s some lost classic or anything. Far from it. And yet it’s become a work worthy of at least some note, remarked upon mostly by feminist scholars, and a few mystery nerds like myself, prized more for its historical significance than any literary merit. Even at the time of its release, few read it, and it took a critical drubbing, even from theoretically sympathetic periodicals like Ms. and off our backs.

It may have been billed as a “thriller,” but wearing a cape doesn’t make you Superman. The book strayed far afield from what was expected of the genre (right down to its subversion of “traditional linear narrative”), even if it came stuffed to the gills with all sorts of pulpy tropes that offered a little something for everyone: some kinky sex, the CIA skulking around, the US Marines, evil drug smugglers, snooty art scene types, sexual assault and rape, Commies and more, all marinated in more pissed off 1970s-era politics than you might expect, reading at times more like an angry, finger-pointing manifesto or an endless university lecture than a work of fiction. Obviously a product of its time, but it hasn’t necessarily aged well. Even if much of the rhetoric does seem uncomfortably familiar.

Too bad, because while Angel Dance may not be a lot of things, it was also surely something.

Former journalist MARIA KATERINA LORCA GUERRERA ALCAZAR, better known simply as KAT GUERRERA (thank God!) is an angry and increasingly militant activist. Born of Cuban and Spanish parents, she’s already served time for armed robbery, and has recently gotten the boot from her underground women’s group of radicals, when the cops show up looking for her. At loose ends, she’s hired as a bodyguard to protect the best-selling but controversial feminist author Angel Stone. Seems Angel has also pissed off more than a few people (mostly men, of course), and she’s received a few death threats.

It’s Kat’s job to protect her. The catch is that even as she gets drawn into Angel’s world, she discovers she’s also attracted to her, while issues of race, class, sexuality and gender are raised. And raised some more. Suffice it to say that “patriarchal capitalism” doesn’t get off easy.

Your political mileage may vary, but for anyone truly interested in the history of the Shamus Game, it’s definitely worth a read.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

American academic, activist and author M.F. Beal was born in New York City in 1937, and attended Cornell University and Barnard College, earning her BA in 1960, and then the University of Oregon, where she received an MFA in 1970. Long passionate about women’s issues, she’s mostly known for her literary work in the 1970s, including the books Amazon One (1975), a fictionalized account of four women in Weather Underground, and her non-fiction Safe House: A Casebook Study of Revolutionary Feminism in the 1970s (1976) which she co-edited, followed by Angel Dance (1977). Other works include West Coast Fiction (1979) and End of Days (1982)

UNDER OATH

  • “This book is a wild ride through political intrigue, sex, drugs, and 70s feminism; groundbreaking and a must-read for anyone interested in the history of the genre.”
    — Kristen Lepionka (May 2017, Criminal Elements)
  • “This is not a book I would urge you to read.”
    — Terri Poppe (1977, off our backs: a women’s newsjournal)
  • “(Angel Dance‘s) angry, complex, visionary indictment of heterosexual and patriarchal capitalism is steaming with 1970s protest culture. The Chicana detective and first-person narrator Kat Guerrera is a subversive. The character embodies the way class, race, gender, and sexuality interface to uphold the hegemonic order of law. The corrupt power of the state is represented as being so extensive that concepts of “justice” can no longer be invoked.
    —Zaedryn Meade in The Book of Fusion: The Lesbian Identity Integration Fictional Narrative (2003-2004,  Women Studies Department, University of Washington)

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

  • Supposedly Thomas Pynchon, one of the Grand Poobah’s of American Lit and author of Inherent Vice, was a fan of Angel Dance, although it should be noted that both Beal and Pynchon attended Cornell University, and apparently Pynchon used to visit Beal in Fresno in the early seventies when she was teaching English at California State University.

NOVELS

RIYL

Looking for more books about PIs protecting controversial feminist authors?

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

Published

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