Nantes, 1440. La abadesa Guillemette se entera de que están desapareciendo niños y comienza a investigar.
Los Ángeles, 2022. La detective Lany Dunbar acude a una llamada que comunica la desaparición de un adolescente y, durante su investigación, descubre que hay muchos más.

It’s been awhile since a book has made me this angry.

There’s an undercurrent of homophobia and transphobia that runs throughout Ann Benson’s bloated, long-winded and uninteresting novel “Thief of Souls.” The story alternates between two different time periods, one the fifteenth century narrated by the former wet nurse of serial killer of young boys Gilles de Rais and the other the twenty-first century narrated by a detective investigating a string of murders eerily similar to the aforementioned serial killer’s.

A mere thirty pages in we can see where the present-day detective character, Lany Dunbar, stands on LGBT issues:

“I took a long breath before asking the next question…’Mrs. Leeds, do you have a regular companion of any kind?’

“I always hate that question. My first impulse is to say boyfriend, but we can’t do that anymore either. It’s getting silly, the way we have to talk now. Frazee had a great call once – female-sounding voice says, ‘My lover is missing.’ After the usual round of questions Frazee asks for a description. It took him about twenty minutes to figure out that the caller was a cross-dresser, and the missing lover was actually a woman but was being described as a man, the point of the whole story being that you can’t always assume things about people by looking at them or listening to them, because people do all sorts of things to make themselves look different than they really are” (28).

This could easily be disregarded as the character’s own internal transphobia, but it quickly becomes apparent throughout the rest of the novel that the author shares this opinion herself. Homosexuality is brought up in both narratives and both quickly and unapologetically link it to pedophilia. There are no characters or situations in the book that negate this wrong-headed position and it poisons the entire novel.

Indeed, the threat of the “Other,” in this case someone who doesn’t fit into the author’s personal notion of the moral, heterosexual world, permeates every page of the story. In a situation similar to the section of the novel quoted above, Wilbur Durand, the serial killer in the twenty-first century narrative, is painted as a threat merely because of his preternaturally high speaking voice:

“His voice surprised me; I expected it to have a spellbinding quality, along the lines of Vincent Price or Will Lyman. But instead of the rich, commanding voice I anticipated, he put out a series of high-pitched utterances that coalesced, against all odds, into a demand.

“An alto, if he was a singer – not a man’s voice at all, but not really a woman’s either. If he’d called me on the phone, I wouldn’t have been able to tell what sex he was. His voice almost had a fake quality to it, as if he were speaking through some distortion device or from underwater; every word felt like metal scraped on metal” (316).

The idea of LGBT people being “unnatural” is firmly presented in the coda of this scene. Once Durand stalks his way out of the police station, this exchange occurs between Dunbar and her desk sergeant:

“’Jeez, Louise,’ the desk sergeant finally said, ‘what the hell was that?’

“’I don’t know,’ I breathed. ‘I think scientists are working on it.’

“’Good luck to them,’ Spence said” (318).

But Benson saves her worst piece of homophobia for last. When the prep for Durand’s trial is taking place and a jury is being selected, Dunbar makes this rueful observation:

“…the ideal jury for Wilbur Durand, a cookie cutter group of childless males with questionable gender identity, an inborn sense of entitlement, and flexible social mores, could not be created even by the most fastidious jury consultant” (475).

Frankly, it shocks me that this was published in 2002. As a society we should’ve progressed from these stereotypical and dangerous representations of LGBT people in fiction. It appalls me that a publishing house would publish this drivel and still have it in print. Obviously we still have a long way to go. ( )

Well written mystery with a deeply disturbing subject matter that is not often written about. It haunted me after I read it long ago and for some reason I did a reread. Fascinating true history. ( )

Dos casos paralelos de asesinatos en serie: Uno acontecido en Francia, en 1440: la abadesa Guillemet piensa llegar hasta el final para desenmascarar al culpable, un acaudalado caballero próximo a la corte, antiguo compañero de armas de Juana de Arco. ( )

Nantes, 1440, la abadesa Guillemette se entera de que están desapareciendo niños y comienza a investigar. Los Angeles, 2002, la detective Lany Dunbar acude a una llamada que comunica la desaparición de un adolescente y, durante su investigación, descubre que hay muchos más.