GIRLS WITH HAMMERS (Book).

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Author: DeCrescenzo, Teresa

GIRLS WITH HAMMERS
By Cynn Chadwick
Harrington Park Press Alice Street Editions
Binghamton, NY 13904-1580
www.HaworthPress.com

Girls with Hammers is a terrific summer read. It's just right for tucking into your beach bag, and inexpensive enough that you need not worry about water damage. Chadwick is very good with the "imagery thing." From page one the imagery is vivid, lively, and so descriptive that you feel as if you're looking through the window or standing in the doorway, watching things unfold. The ability to create word images like that is one mark of a good writer.

Lily and Hannah are having one of "those discussions" that lovers have, the kind you have over and over ritualistically, without ever getting anywhere. The topic begins as whatever bothers one person in the relationship, and bringing it up soon escalates into "kitchen-sinking" where everything in the relationship's emotional kitchensink is brought into the conversation, thereby guaranteeing that the real problem won't get resolved. This time the argument ends with Hannah peeling out of the driveway, leaving Lily to ponder her future, which she does by sleeping as much as possible, and channel-surfing when sleep eludes her.

Things go from bad to worse for Lily in rapid-fire order. Her father dies suddenly, her estranged lover goes to Amsterdam for six months, and Lily inherits her father's construction company. As owner-operator of Girls with Hammers, Lily enjoyed her nearly solo work life, with just one helper. Now she has to manage her father's male crew, who are anything but thrilled to be working for a woman, and she is not exactly responsive to some of the clients, "bitchy queens who want things done their way."

Since this is, after all, a mystery novel, mysterious things soon begin to happen, such as arson that destroys the house Lily and her crew are remodeling; the same house is also vandalized. Of course the mystery of whether Hannah and Lily will reconcile is thematic and present from the outset. There is also the question of who Arlo is, the man who went to work for Lily's father just before dad took a most peculiar wrong step off a ladder. And brother James, and ex-lover Cat, and the oft-repeated George Eliot quote, "It's never too late to be what you might have been", which is actually the central theme of this action-packed, intelligently written, quite satisfying mystery.

Kudos also to Haworth/Harrington Park Press for creating the Alice Street Editions imprint, to provide a much-needed voice for "established as well as up-and-coming lesbian writers." There are not enough venues available for lesbian writers to showcase their creativity and to hone their craft.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE)

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By Teresa DeCrescenzo