Wow. It certainly has been a while since my last update, but after finishing Money Shot by Christa Faust, I had to post about it.
A while back, I wrote a blog about how, for the most part, I do not enjoy mystery novels (or, more specifically, crime novels) written by women, as they generally get tied up with crap I don’t care about (ie: feel good garbage). Of course, there are exceptions (like Janet Evanovich), but those are few and far between.
Well, if Money Shot is any indication, Faust is a very welcome addition to my limited library of female crime writers. (And before any panties get in a bunch and accuse me of being misogynistic, can men write romance novels as good as women? I’m guessing no.)
Anywho, Money Shot, aside from having a terrific oh-so appropriate title, centers around Angel Dare, a former pornstar turned business woman (her business caters to women in porn). When she gets a call to pull a favor for a friend, a quickie movie, Dare reluctantly agrees. (Partly because the guy she’s to ‘do’ is the current top dog in the industry and he specifically asked for her).
Once she shows up to the shoot, though, she’s beaten, tortured and raped — all over a missing briefcase that she knows seemingly nothing about. Fortunately for our heroine, she manages to live through this ordeal (not for the lack of the baddies trying), and takes it upon herself to give a little payback.
Just scope the book’s first paragraph:
Coming back from the dead isn’t as easy as they make it seem in the movies. In real life it takes forever to do little things like pry open your eyes. You spend excruciating ages trying to bend your left middle finger down far enough to feel the rope around your wrists. Even longer figuring out that the cold hard thing poking you in the cheek is one of the handles of a pair of jumper cables. This is not the kind of action that makes for gripping cinema. Plus there are these long dull stretches where people in the audience would probably go take a piss or get popcorn, since it looks as if nothing is happening and they figure maybe you really are dead after all. After a while, you start to wonder the same thing yourself. You also wonder what will happen if you throw up behind the oily rag ducttaped into your mouth or how long it will take for someone to notice you’re missing. Otherwise you are mostly busy bleeding, trying not to pass back out, or laboriously adding up the cables, the stuffy cramped darkness, the scratchy carpet below and the raw hollow metal above to equal your current location, the trunk of an old and badly maintained car. That’s what it was like for me, anyway.
How can you not like that opening?
And, the best part is Faust keeps that finger snapping beat the entire novel. Good times, indeed.
Part of the Hard Case Crime library, Money Shot is probably the best I’ve read of the series. And that’s impressive because, with the exception of maybe two, they all have been top notch reads.
I’m eagerly looking forward to more from Faust. She’s a fantastic writer, she has crazy wit and she’s pretty damn hot to boot.
That’s right. I said “to boot.”
If you dig the hard boiled, pick this one up immediately.
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