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I'm not a nostalgic person at heart, but among the things I miss are video stores and 1990s cinema. They go together, don't they? I miss roaming the aisles with five dollars in my hands, not knowing what I want to watch and having only tattered covers and short blurbs to base my choice on. I tend to have a soft spot for everything that reminds me that era and that is exactly why I got a kick out of Lori Michelle's erotic thriller Dual Harvest, which I have read for Women in Horror month. So yeah, technically it's a thriller but it blurs the line with horror enough to challenge the notion of genre.
Lila is a quiet young woman trying to emancipate herself from a heavy and mysterious past. She works a dead end office job and lives vicariously through her roommate Amber's adventures. The two women couldn't be any more different and while Lila doesn't approved of Amber's lifestyle, she loves and envies her assertiveness. Meanwhile, detectives Balducci and Patrano are investigating the Harvester Killer case, a sex-crazed maniac taking pieces of men (s)he has sex with. I know what you're thinking, but it's a little more complicated than that.
Dual Harvest had a strong feminine touch to it, which I greatly appreciated. The difference between featuring female protagonists and feminine writing is not often understood and I thought Lori Michelle's novel was a good example of the latter. She uses language and idioms that give insight into female perspective. In Lila's case it was her insecurities and the inner world she retreated in to fend off the weight of her mundane existence. The two detectives were enjoyable (they were bro-tastic) in their own right although an odd fit in the novel. I wouldn't have minded having them only showing up in Lila and Amber's chapters.
So, there you have it. Dual Harvest was a tad predictable (the same way 1990s thrillers were), but it is wrapped up so beautifully that I tumbled to the ending with a satisfied chuckle. Sometimes it's not what you say that's important in fiction, but how you say it. I would say that Dual Harvest is not for everyone. It's a pretty steamy novel that belongs to a forgotten era of storytelling and it might offend more contemporary sensibilities. I liked it. It was a quick and fun read perfectly adapted to long Canadian winter nights. Dual Harvest doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, it knows what it is and it delivers. A promising first novel.