2012 Reread: I got lost in this for a month. My very first full reread since the series hit its ending. Since I knew where it would start and go and end up. It was just as terrible, wonderful, painful, heartbreaking, heart healing, amazing as every other read. I never stop knowing my heart belongs to this. ( )

A crime story *very* loosely connected to the Strangers in Paradise storyline. I find this story fully irrelevant to the SiP saga, and also repulsive. I don't like the way female sexuality is bestialised in this one - something I would not have expected from Terry Moore, who so skillfully has depicted the lesbian love drama between Francine and Katchoo in SiP. thumbs down. ( )

Terry Moore's STRANGERS IN PARADISE series can be both wonderful and frustrating, and this is no exception to the trend. It's a layered storyline: a contemporary writer in a loveless marriage writes out her frustrations in fiction, creating the story of a clandestine love affair between a married woman and an unspecified "beloved" in Victorian England. Unfortunately, the story starts to get murderous, mirroring events in the writer's real life.

The Victorian elements are wonderful - Moore makes use of period engravings and ventriloquizes period writing pretty effectively in a brilliant riff on a well-worn "Jack the Ripper" theme. It's the modern elements which frustrate: there's a needless prologue to link the modern writer Molly with the world of Francine and Katchoo, and the ending is a real cop-out. (They didn't use the phrase "Talk to the hand" in the Eighties, either. Just sayin'.)

Overall, I get the feeling of Moore having bitten off more than he could chew with this. He might have created a more satisfying narrative had he stayed within the Victorian era alone. ( )