Backless, Strapless, & Slit to the Throat: A Femme Fatale Anthology (2009)

Edited by Betty Dobson
Featuring stories by Betty Dobson, James S. Dorr, Krys Douglas, Everett C. Gavel, Jr., Gary R. Hoffman, Gail Kavanaugh, Gail A. Laursen, Brenda Roberts, Gretchen Wilsenach, Diana Woods, and Phoebe Wray
2009, Inkspotter Publishing

I've been really excited to get my press copy of Backless, Strapless, and Slit to the Throat. The entire anthology focuses on the most interesting, and sexy, aspect of noir writing: the femme fatale. However, I was surprised to find that not all of the stories in BS&STTT are actually 'noir'. In fact, horror, fantasy, and surreal poetry about dark, seductive, evil, and extremely dangerous women are also included. Like any anthology, the writing styles and levels of sophistication vary from story to story, but the overall message stays (relatively) true; there are some bad, bad women out there;

Gary R. Hoffman's female private eye stories (Ole Fred and a Mexican Marsalis and To Hold 'em or Fold 'em) about Meg Bartlett, a detective in St. Louis, and her alcohol-filled, sex-romping mystery solving are the only true 'noir' stories in the anthology. Meg is a very fun character - totally equal to her male counterparts in pop culture. She's also expected and hoped for in an anthology about femmes fatales - she's a great twist on the archetypal male detective character and is also a clever femme fatale. Meg is neither hero nor villain- just the facts, ma'am.

Several stories, like The Right Man (James S. Dorr), Portrait of a Husband (Gail Kavanaugh), Femme Brutale (Gretchen Wilsenach), and The Snooper and The South End Snitch (Betty Dobson) all have a definite humorous quality and mystery fiction tone. They're kinda 'Alfred Hitchcock' Anthology material and provide a quick, if diabolical, chuckle. Of course, they all involve women spying, double-crossing, or otherwise entangling themselves in terrible situations for selfish reasons, and usually wishing they'd stayed out of it completely.

These dangerous women do not always win in BS&STTT. Awaiting Her (Gail A. Laursen) and Maestro (Gretchen Wilsenach) end in tragedy for the deranged and unlucky femmes fatales in their plots. Overshadowed, by Betty Dobson, is clearly about multiple personality disorders and ends violently and wretchedly for the victim of the unhinged woman. Diana Wood's Keepsake isn't tragic so much as off-putting; a woman targeting men and sleeping with them, the way a beast chooses its prey, in order to get pregnant.

Of course, the supernatural had to sneak into this anthology somewhere. Stranger in the Night by Krys Douglas is a very short vampire story where the seductive vampiress gets it in the end with some sunlight, as she's about to bite her two young teenaged victims. Resistance, by Betty Dobson, is an odd story - I'm not sure why it ended up in this collection at all. Set in a future unknown post-apocalyptica, a group of nuns in a cloister fight to protect - something. It is unclear what. A young nun takes her own life rather than surrender to enemy forces. There doesn't seem to be anything particularly 'femme fatale' about Resistance - not in the plot or the characters. Even the nun's suicide is sad rather than heroic, and since their cause is unknown, it's very difficult to rationalize why this makes the nun a hero in editor (and writer) Betty Dobson's eyes. Names by Phoebe Wray describes the existence of an amnesiac that kills men in order to ease her own mental and emotional anguish. However, she comes across some type of malevolent female spirit who beats her at her own game (that game involving alphabetical names). Very strange and frightening, Names is more straight horror fiction than anything else, but is definitely a chilling way to end the anthology.

I've never been a fan of thematic poetry, and the largest issue with BS&STTT is the smattering if disjointed poems that are scattered throughout the framework of the anthology. Velvet Gardens by Brenda Roberts is a sex poem about a woman having an orgasm. Nothing particularly brutal about that. Fingernails and In the Third Person by Everett C. Gavel, Jr. mentions gruesome images like peeling back of fingernails and exposed flesh, torn with torture. But there's no mention of a woman, anywhere in the poems. Tango of Tears by Gretchen Wilsenach is the only poem remotely appropriate for BS&STTT, being that it is about a prostitute dancing with her male client.

Dobson's vision extends far beyond the noir literary genre, but almost too far. BS&STTT is often disjointed and the stories that stray so far from the 'femme fatale' theme, i.e. that don't even have a strong and dangerous female character in them, are detrimental to the integrity of the anthology.