“Do the things you’ve done in your past add up to the person you are now? Or are you reinvented by the choices you make for the future? I used to think I knew the answer to those questions. Now I’m not so sure.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (OCT 9, 2011)

Hard Case Crime is back after a short hiatus, and for avid fans, the line-up is impressive: Quarry’s Ex by Max Allan Collins (delayed release from a year ago), Getting Off by Lawrence Block, The Consummata by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, and Choke Hold by Christa Faust.

Choke Hold is novelist and former peep show girl Faust’s second title for Hard Case Crime, and it’s a sequel to Money Shot. Faust is Hard Case Crime’s first female novelist, and if you think that means a tender, sensitive look at crime, then think again. Faust’s protagonist is tough former porn star, Angel Dare, a woman who feels more comfortable giving a blowjob than extending a sympathy hug. In Money Shot, Angel, owner of an adult modeling agency came out of retirement for one last gig. Big mistake. The job is a set-up by some particularly nasty gangsters who are hunting for a briefcase full of cash. Angel, who’s raped, beaten and stuffed in the trunk of a car, finds herself on the wrong side of a prostitution ring.

Choke Hold (and the title’s meaning becomes clear as the story plays out) finds Angel living under an assumed name as a waitress in Arizona. She was part of the Witness Protection program for 19 months and attending mandatory therapy with a shrink named Lindsay:

“She was always making these unequivocal statements about ‘women in my situation’ that had nothing to do with how I actually felt. She also insisted that I was in denial about my ‘abuse’ in the adult film industry. I could never talk to her about the things that were really on my mind. About the fact I didn’t feel like a poor violated victim at all. I felt like some kind of war veteran. Like I’d been forced to turn off something important inside me to become the killer I needed to be and I didn’t have any idea how to turn it back on again. To become an ordinary citizen again, if such a thing were possible. So instead I spent most of our time during the sessions with her by telling the raunchiest, kinkiest stories about my ‘abuse.’ I think she secretly got off on it. Poor Lindsay just needed a decent orgasm.”

Angel’s boring life under the Witness Protection program comes to an abrupt end when she realizes that her cover’s been blown. With her emergency ever-packed, go-bag, “two shitty fake IDs” and a few grand in cash, Angel ran. She’s in Arizona, waitressing, and providing after-hours entertainment for her boss trying to work off the expenses of a forged passport when her past catches up to her in an explosively violent way. Thick Vic, crankster and washed-up porn star, unexpectedly walks into Angel’s diner and death’s along for the ride. From this moment until the novel’s conclusion, it’s non-stop action with Angel on the run from pissed off Mexican gangsters involved in illegal boxing matches and cocaine smuggling. And she’s also on the run from her old nemesis, brutal Croatian gangster, Vukasin.

Choke Hold moves the action from Arizona to the illegal boxing matches held in Mexico, to a Las Vegas porn convention with live-streaming action. Throughout the chase, Angel picks up two protectors, Thick Vic’s cocky son, Cody and Hank “The Hammer”–a legendary boxer who’s sunk to teaching in a tacky local gym, fighting illegal matches, and practicing a little loan enforcement on the side. It’s through Angel’s relationship with Hank that this pulp novel shows its depth beyond the action. Angel never sees herself as a victim, but here’s she’s used and abused more than once in an industry in which no one rides for free. Hank’s industry takes a similar approach. He’s boxed his way into physical damage and suffers permanent migraines and short term memory loss. There’s a sad connection between Angel and Hank–a connection of two people who use their bodies to get by.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 23 readers
PUBLISHER:	Hard Case Crime (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Christa Faust
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Money Shot And: Quarry’s Ex by Max Allan Collins The Consummata by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

Bibliography:

• Control Freak (1998; 2002)
• Hoodtown (2004)

• Money Shot (2008)
• Choke Hold (2011)

With Poppy Z. Brite:

• Triads (2004)

“This final act will not only be one of history’s memorable museum thefts—and is not everything I do fit to historical measures?—it will also prove the most abject of my humiliations.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Claudia Real (MAY 14, 2009)

As a Latin American woman I read Empire of Humiliation hoping for a novel that I could relate to, and I wasn’t disappointed. I loved the descriptions of Mexico DF which made me feel like I was back there again. I mean the description of dinner plates at outdoor restaurants getting so coated by the oily air pollution that you can write on them with your finger, that’s exactly how terrible it is. So for anyone who wants a look at nitty-gritty Mexico, at least the cities, this fulfills. Maybe it’s one of those things where because the author is a foreigner living in Mexico, he actually sees and feels some parts better than we do who have lived there since we were young.

The main story is exciting and it’s going to be easy to get for anyone who knows about life outside the “States.” What really drives people crazy, and it drives me crazy too, is how we outsiders who were born in other countries complain about America but constantly find ourselves dressing that way and listening to the music and everything. It’s pretty brilliant in the book how that feeling gets hit and converted into a whole plot. Talk about pushing the buttons!

The plot turns out to be complicated in the end, and it’s definitely going to make some people mad, but it starts out as a simple story. Anderson and Marina are Americans who get set up as the culprits for a string of theater-like murders down in Mexico City. Their picture appears in the local newspapers and the entire affair becomes a kind of media sensation. Actually it’s kind of a sensation of outrage with Americans killing Mexicans and all the nationalistic-type anger people feel about this abuse. Obviously Anderson and Marina need to find out what’s going on, fast, before they get caught. But that’s just the beginning. From there things get more original as it turns out that each of the main characters has their own agenda, their own way of using this international violence and tension.

On the subject of character development, it is a little thin. You definitely get the idea that you’re supposed to fill in the blanks about who these people are. I would even say that except for the three main characters, everyone else comes through a bit like cardboard, like they’re just there to support the story. On the other hand this is a thriller kind of novel, so really they are just there to support the story.

The last point concerns the final chapters. This was one of the more surprising endings that I’ve read. For one thing, there’s a switch in the writing style from some anonymous storyteller telling you what is happening, to Anderson talking straight at the reader. It’s a great device and it really worked because the entire meaning of all that happened up until then also gets turned completely inside out, like a sock. You’re left wanting to go back and read it from the start to see how this hidden and different story gets built underneath the apparently main plot. (hint: The understory involves a museum robbery in Mexico, and is based on fact, by the way.)

Conclusion. For anyone wanting to read a book with an international setting and themes and background, and especially Mexico, this is a top grade thriller. It makes you think (or maybe get mad) about what’s going on in the world, and it makes you want to keep turning the pages.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 5 readers
PUBLISHER:	Overflow (August 1, 2008)
REVIEWER:	Claudia Real
AMAZON PAGE:	Empire of Humilation
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	James Jens Brusseau
EXTRAS:	Read the excerpt from the Amazon page.
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	If you like this… try: Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko The Uncomfortable Dead by Paco Ignacio Taibo Night of the Radishes by Sandra Benitez

Bibliography:

• Empire of Humiliation (August 2008)