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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780553578256
ISBN number: 0553578251
Label: Bantam
Manufacturer: Bantam
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 416
Printing Date: November 28, 2000
Publishing house: Bantam
Release Date: November 28, 2000
Sale Popularity Level: 507294
Studio: Bantam
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Product Description:
Night Work
Kate and her partner, Al Hawkin, are called to a scene of carefully executed murder: the victim is a muscular man, handcuffed and strangled, a stun gun's faint burn on his chest and candy in his pocket. The likeliest person to want him dead, his often-abused wife, is meek and frail--and has an airtight alibi. Kate and Al are stumped, until a second body turns up--also zapped, cuffed, and strangled...and carrying a candy bar. This victim: a convicted rapist. As newspaper headlines speculate about vendetta killings, a third death draws Kate and Al into a network of pitiless destruction that reaches far beyond San Francisco, a modern-style hit list with shudderingly primal roots.
Amazon.com Review:
Laurie King's very first Kate Martinelli mystery, A Grave Talent, won Best First Novel honors from both the Mystery Writers of America and the British Crime Writers' Association. In this fourth installment in the series, King once again displays her talent as both a prose stylist and a masterful plotter in a case that proves to be personally harrowing for her heroine.
While attending a school play one evening, Detective Martinelli gets what appears to be a routine page about a homicide. The murder victim is James Larsen, an airport baggage handler found in the Presidio, handcuffed, strangled, and with stun-gun burns on his chest. And apparently he had a sweet tooth, given the candies found in his pocket. When it comes out that Larsen was an abusive husband whose wife now lives in a shelter, Martinelli's list of suspects takes a distasteful turn. Could the perpetrator be connected with the Ladies of Perpetual Disgruntlement, the group of secretive women (or men) who've lately been terrorizing abusers and rapists around the city with their humorous, updated version of the tar-and-feather treatment? Could it be Larsen's wife, a mousy woman who, nonetheless, is clearly harboring some secrets? Could it be Roz Hall, Martinelli's social crusading feminist minister friend? In each case, rage would be justified, but not murder.
When two additional murder victims with similar profiles--and pockets full of candy--surface, the San Francisco media takes an interest in this latest instance of vigilante justice. The investigation is further complicated by Roz's very public interest in the case of a young Indian bride who she believes was murdered. As Martinelli and her partner Al Hawkins try to sort through the mire of emotional entanglements, personal politics, and public scrutiny, King deftly maneuvers her tale through several carefully crafted turns. The novel is also threaded with Hindu spirituality and images of the dark goddess Kali, a vengeful figure perfectly appropriate in a novel about victimized women striking back. --Patrick O'Kelley
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Rated by buyers 
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Solid mystery with believable characters, plus exotic locale.
And this book helped to solve yet another mystery: how people turn to progressive politics.
The answer is simple: first, you have to get a multi-million house free and clear in the center of SF (from parents, from partner's parents or by some other means) and then you can start doing all things progressive.
Rated by buyers 
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The Ladies of Perpetual Disgruntlement are the heroines of tomorrow for battered and abused women. However, their way of dishing out punishment is against the law; Kate Martinelli and Al Hawkins are all over this case. However, it only gets stranger and more unnerving when religion, culture, and friends all find their way into this case. Also, Martinelli's personal life once again gets scrambled into it and the culprits are who Kate would rather not suspect and the people you wouldn't dare expect.
Rated by buyers 
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After 100 pages I just quit the book. The author spends 90% of her time creating a world in which all lesbians (and some other women) are beautiful, cool, responsible and intelligent and all men are brutish and destructive.
I wouldn't accept this kind of bigoted generalization in reverse so continuing to read this book would be patronizing and only politically correct. The author should beat her drum more quietly.
Two stars for her sentence structure and spelling.
Rated by buyers -
I found the book quite unsatisfying for two reasons: First, the guilty party is revealed within a few pages of the start,so there is no mystery. This means the reason to read on is either to learn more about the the characters, or about the modus operandi of the killer. It is the authors obligation to provide one or the other. Here we learn neither, despite perservering through some lukewarm action, and some dreadful social interactions. For example, how on earth are these victims lured to their death. Failing to provide this information means the author is not confined by any rules of logic, and in so doing cheats the reader. Second, the dialogue is flat and forced. Do we really neat to create a lesbian relationship that suffers from the same irresponsible cliche behavior attributed to male detectives? I don t think this is a step forward. All in all, I ended the book feeling incredibly ripped off.
Rated by buyers -
The fourth book in the Kate Martinelli series, "Night Work" is a suspenseful, dark, briliantly written mystery. The story centers around a series of murders with only one apparent connection-the victims are all perpetrators of violence against women. However, like "A Grave Talent," the story is far more dense and complex than it seems.
This was the last book I read for a Women's Studies class entitled Murder Mysteries, and the second by Laurie King. The class focused on gender and violence, and I think this book was a fitting end to the class because it focuses on crimes that are specifically gendered, namely rape and wife battering. The book poses a number of hard questions for those of us readers who consider ourselves opposed to violence. First, when, if ever, is violence acceptable? What kind of violence? Perpetrated by whom, and for what reasons? Violence against women is clearly unacceptable, but is violence against those who are violent acceptable? I am 100% opposed to capital punishment and other forms of violence, but I found myself unwittingly tolerating, and almost agreeing with, the vigilante type murders of violent men who escaped the criminal justice system. When I realized this, I was shocked at myself.
I found the use of Kali and indeed the idea of Kali herself fascinating. First, King's use of Kali creates a somewhat mystical, mysteriouis atmosphere to the book, which I found very effective. From reading the Introduction, in which Kali is described, we know that she must have something to do with the novel, but we are not sure what, until the very end of the book. King keeps us guessing, with a quote from "The Invocation to Kali" at the beginning of every chapter. We know that there must be some connection between Kali and the murders, but we are never sure exactly what it is. I was captivated by this book because I wanted to know the truth about the murders, and what Kali had to do with it all. I had a hard time putting the book down, fascinated by this aspect of it.
This book had a profound effect on me. At one point, Kate reluctantly realizes that there is an energy force present in all of us-a force of both destruction and creation. Perhaps that explains why I did not disagree with the violence in this book. Though, once revealed, the symbolism of Kali seems somewhat heavy-handed, it made me question myself, and the nature of violence overall.
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