Night Work (2000)

ISBN 978-0-553-57825-6

A People Magazine “pick”

For a brief but intense moment, Kate thought that she was being attacked by a wild woman with blood on her teeth. She could almost smell the blood, splashed around the woman in a pool, and then the hallucination faded, leaving her to gaze in mingled amazement and horror at the image before her.

The painting on the wall was enough to give a man nightmares. It showed a woman of sorts, but this was a woman who would have caused a playboy to shrivel, would have given pause to the most ardent feminist, would have a Freudian rapidly retracting that plaintive, worn, masculine query concerning what women wanted.

For what this lady wanted was blood.

And had it, as Kate could well see. The deep blue, larger-than-life female was wading through a lake of the stuff, splashing it around, looking drunk with it. Kate recognized her instantly as Kali with the necklace of skulls and the belt of human hands, laughing her terrible pleasure at the decapitated head she held up in one of her four arms.

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What they say

A group of feminist vigilantes called the Ladies of Perpetual Disgruntlement has been exacting wickedly funny acts of minor revenge against men who physically abuse women. Kate has a sneaking sympathy for the work of the Ladies, but when more bodies of abusive men start turning up, it looks as though someone—some woman—in San Francisco has taken the ultimate step in vengeance. (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

King explores feminist issues extremely well with or without Martinelli, who’s a lesbian, but I prefer with. A young Indian girl is burned to death, and Kate is drawn in when an activist woman with experience in India argues that the girl had been murdered because she was not producing a male (or indeed any) child. (Boston Globe)