Spirit of the Silent Butler

Rating:
Summary: dark cutting edge crime thriller
Review: Elsie Saunders is a woman who has experienced much evil in the world. Her family doctor molested her, her priest was having an affair with her mother, and her father killed her mother and then himself. It's a violent world and she wants to take care of the evildoers who are let out early or are untouchable under the law in an inept system. So far Elsie has taken care of the man who killed her best friend and the pediophile who raped and abused another bud. After killing three more men for similar heinous acts, Elsie goes into hiding for five years.

Her vacation is about to end when somebody using her real name calls her to inform her that young teens are being raped and beaten. Elise reconnects with her friend who is working at a car dealership run by his lover. Two women who worked there are killed, their bodies mutilated in ways too ugly to describe. It is Elise who connects the rapes with the killing and she is determined to stop the people responsible for those acts using her own brand of justice.

SPIRIT OF THE SILENT BUTLER is a very raunchy, gory and graphic in terms of violence, language and sex but they fit seamlessly into the dark theme of the story line. Elsie doesn't act like a killer but she has a strong sense of justice and is determined that any predators that come into her orbit will be eliminated using methods that are not exactly legal. Babs Lakey is a cutting edge storyteller who tells it like it is.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: dark cutting edge crime thriller
Review: Elsie Saunders is a woman who has experienced much evil in the world. Her family doctor molested her, her priest was having an affair with her mother, and her father killed her mother and then himself. It's a violent world and she wants to take care of the evildoers who are let out early or are untouchable under the law in an inept system. So far Elsie has taken care of the man who killed her best friend and the pediophile who raped and abused another bud. After killing three more men for similar heinous acts, Elsie goes into hiding for five years.

Her vacation is about to end when somebody using her real name calls her to inform her that young teens are being raped and beaten. Elise reconnects with her friend who is working at a car dealership run by his lover. Two women who worked there are killed, their bodies mutilated in ways too ugly to describe. It is Elise who connects the rapes with the killing and she is determined to stop the people responsible for those acts using her own brand of justice.

SPIRIT OF THE SILENT BUTLER is a very raunchy, gory and graphic in terms of violence, language and sex but they fit seamlessly into the dark theme of the story line. Elsie doesn't act like a killer but she has a strong sense of justice and is determined that any predators that come into her orbit will be eliminated using methods that are not exactly legal. Babs Lakey is a cutting edge storyteller who tells it like it is.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: The Best of a Genre
Review: Lakey's _Spirit_ is a _Clockwork Orange_ for the new millenium. This is confident, ground-breaking fiction about Elsie, a heroine who takes on the controversial view that in a violent society, violence is sometimes the answer. Anyone interested in thrillers or social theory should sit down with these books.

Rating:
Summary: The Best of a Genre
Review: Lakey's _Spirit_ is a _Clockwork Orange_ for the new millenium. This is confident, ground-breaking fiction about Elsie, a heroine who takes on the controversial view that in a violent society, violence is sometimes the answer. Anyone interested in thrillers or social theory should sit down with these books.

Rating:
Summary: Hold Onto the Arms of Your Chair
Review: Spirit of the Silent Butler by Babs Lakey, ISBN 1-928857-04-3

Well-known in the crime fiction field for her publication, Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, Babs Lakey is also the capable author of the Elsie Sanders' books--Spirit of the Silent Butler being number two of the three in print.

Lakey writes extremely well and does what every real author is born to do, she integrates insights about genuine human functioning into her work. She achieves authenticity and goes one step further: She has guts. Lakey isn't guided by the market--what's hot and what's verboten--but writes according to her own vision of the subject matter.

Thus though she's quite a good author, she hasn't been able to place her fingers around commercial success. Her books feature the oddballs of society, the ones we don't want to acknowledge in our mainstream art. As I said, she reflects reality.

If you want to read something different than the (also skilled, but sometimes predictable) forms being pumped out by the New York houses, then you have to order this one at Amazon.

A murdering psycho is on the loose and Detective Lawrence (Law) gets out of bed where he was enjoying his Native American honey, Gee, to do his other duty. In the meantime, car dealer Darwin Silano has decided to step out of the closet and announce his love for boyfriend Tony--only to be met by a cascade of bigotry. Thank goodness, Elsie Sanders is coming to Minneapolis to settle things in the way only Elsie is capable of.

Violent, sexual, rambling and hard-bitten, Spirit of the Silent Butler, is the work of a talented wordsmith who shows the sensibility of someone writing for an audience that isn't generally acknowledged--but that does exist. If you're one of those readers who doesn't much go for today's overly tame mystery writing, try Babs Lakey.

G. Miki Hayden, author of Writing the Mystery, a how-to for both novice and professional, nominated for Agatha and Macavity awards.