"Scott Free" by Marijane Meaker

One of the rather pleasant perks of running a tranny web site of moderate renown is that occasionally publicists with book of "transgendered interest" to plug send me copies for review.

After my initial reaction to the parcel plopping on the doormat - "Squee! Free hardback book! Oooh... signed free hardback book!" - I realise I actually have to read the things and then write something coherent about them.

Such was the case recently when I was sent Scott Free, a crime novel featuring a central TG character.

I'll be honest up front and say I'm not a big fan of crime fiction, so it's not a genre that I have a lot of experience of. But the idea of a TG detective fascinated me, so I looked forward to seeing how the author would handle it.

The main protagonist, Scotti, is a pre-op transsexual living full time as woman in the Hamptons, the area known as a weekend hang-out for the ultra-wealthy of New York. Scotti herself isn't rich, working mainly as a librarian, with the occasional sideline as an insurance investigator.

Being a relative newcomer to the genre I expected a book that describes itself on the cover as "a crime novel" to be, well, about crime. There is a crime involving a corrupt horse killer, which is cursorily solved within in the first few pages, but apart from that the first half of the book is almost completely crime-free.

It's also seemingly plot free, the author spending many chapters developing the build-up to the actual "crime" of the story, the kidnapping of the daughter of a super-rich media tycoon. The lack of action wouldn't be too bad if the time was spent ratcheting up the tension, but there was a distinct lack of that too.

I suppose I should talk about how the TG characters are handled. I got the feeling that the author had done quite a lot of research into transsexuals, as the character of Scotti is quite well realised. Like many transsexuals she's trying to deal with her sex change in a quiet and low-key way, but at the same time has a single-mindedness in the pursuit of her goal, to the detriment of most of her family relationships. The part that rang slightly less true was the ease in which she was "going stealth". No-one in the book clocks her as a pre-op, she's only found out by one other character when she stops for a roadside pee after a drunken night out.

There are two other TG characters in the book, another transsexual (post op), who's more realistically described as still having a deep voice that's mistaken for a man's on the phone, and an FtM man. Both only have a minor part in the story and seem rather undeveloped as characters.

When the kidnapping actually happened I expected the book to pick up pace, but it seemed bogged down in too many loose ends and convoluted relationships. Scotti, far from being the latent master detective that the early plot hints at, is actually quite a minor character towards the end of the book. When she does finally does something dramatic and heroic, the eye of the narrative is elsewhere.

In the end it was all horribly disappointing. The numerous loose threads that the author had spent so long weaving were left wide open. Except for maybe the heroine, none of the characters were likeable, each seemingly cut from the same selfish and self-centred mould. I wanted to root for the heroine, but I never got a chance to, because for most of the book she wasn't doing anything.

Overall a brave attempt to put a TG character at the centre of a genre where transvestites and transsexuals are often cast as the creepy villain,their cross-dressing somehow used as short-hand for their "wrongness".

Scott Free succeeds for using a TS protagonist realistically and sensitively, but fails for not using her to tell a good story.