Murder in the Collective

by Barbara Wilson

Other authorsBarbara Sjoholm
Paperback, 1984

Status

Available

Call number

PS3573.I456 M8 1984

Publication

Seal Press (CA) (1984), Edition: 1st, Paperback, 183 pages

Description

Seattle printing collective owner Pam Nilsen is on the case when a member of the group turns up dead before a controversial merger Pam Nilsen and her twin sister, Penny, inherited Best Printing four years ago when their parents died in a car crash. Unwilling to sell their family legacy, the sisters turned it into a collective run by a cadre of activists whose arguments over the business can be just as impassioned as their support for progressive causes. But internal divisions at the collective pale in comparison to those between Seattle typesetters B. Violet and Moby Dick-once a single company that has since broken apart into an all-female (and lesbian-run) company, and an all-male (and quickly bankrupt) operation. Shortly after Best Printing and B. Violet begin discussing a merger, the offices of the typesetter are ransacked, one of their members nowhere to be found. Then an employee of Best Printing is found murdered. It appears as if someone will stop at nothing-not even murder-to prevent the merger. And it's up to Pam to get to the bottom of this deadly turn of events before the killer strikes again. Murder in the Collective is the first book in the Pam Nilsen Mystery trilogy, which continues with Sisters of the Road and The Dog Collar Murders.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member michaelm42071
Pam Nilsen and her twin sister Penny inherit a printing business when their parents are killed in an auto accident. They turn it into a socially active collective with a black woman, a Chicano (former lover of Pam and currently of Penny), a hippy leftover from the sixties, and a Filipina antiMarcos
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activist. When Elena, the lesbian feminist new member says the lesbian typesetters collective, B-Violet, wants to merge with them (put up to it by her lover Fran, who was one of the B-Violet founders), lots of bad feeling is stirred up on both sides--though Pam meets Hadley Harper, who brings her out, and they play detective together after the B-Violet shop is smashed and Jeremy, the hippie printer, is shot dead. The book seems fairly dated in seventies consciousness-raising oppressed-peoples-awareness cop-suspecting ways, and it's mostly about "relationships" but in a fairly shallow way: how does Pam feel about being a lesbian? how does Penny feel about her sister coming out? how does Pam feel about her sister sleeping with her former lover? These questions, if posed, are answered only superficially. Pam doesn't really solve the murder; she justs finds out that the Filipina did it.
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Language

Original publication date

1984

Physical description

183 p.; 8.3 inches

ISBN

0931188237 / 9780931188237

Local notes

OCLC = 272

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