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Kat Guerrera

kevinburtonsmith

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

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

NOVELS

RIYL

Looking for more books about PIs protecting controversial feminist authors?

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

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