Money Shot (Hard Case Crime (Mass Market Paperback))
by Christa Faust
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Book Summary Information
Author: Christa FaustEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-02
ISBN: 0843959584
Number of pages: 250
Publisher: Hard Case Crime
Book Reviews of Money Shot (Hard Case Crime (Mass Market Paperback))
Book Review: "I was so angry, it felt almost like love."
Summary: 5 Stars
Let me be blunt. Don't get sick. Being in the hospital is a terrible thing, they test you, they warehouse you, and the end result is that you will often get mindsick. The staff was professional, but man-o-man, I just wanted to go home. One of the things that kept me from opening a vein with a spork was that I asked my parents to bring me a stack of these Hard Case novels to read between the boredom and the tests.
If anything good came out of it, besides saving my life, and there are those that will argue THAT point, was that it gave me the opportunity to read Christa Faust's original novel "Money Shot". Retired, ex-porn queen Angel Dare is a salty spitfire who has given up acting at the height of her career, and with Didi, her secretary, and girl Friday, run a talent agency for porn stars. Dare has her ego stroked by old friend Sam Hammer, and she decides to make a comeback and make another film with co-star Jesse Black. A near fatal mistake. Dare walks into a trap, and thinking that she knows where some money has been dumped by a friend of one of her actresses, Black ties her up, beats her, tortures her, rapes her, and gets any information that she might have. Black's boss, shoots Hammer, and when Black is done with Dare, Black binds her, dumps her into a car's trunk and takes her out to execute her, and screws it up. He shoots the trunk full of holes, clipping Dare in the progress, and thinking that she is dead, leaves her there. She wakes up after Black has gone and escapes the car and finding a working telephone calls her security escort Lalo Malloy. He comes for her, helps clean her up and together they go on the lam, as she is now wanted by the police and the crooks, and decide to find out what is going on, and to get even.
This isn't Faust's first trip to the rodeo. An experienced hand at writing both horror and hardboiled crime stories, Faust knows her way about the genre. She manages to inject her heroine with all of the grit, determination, intelligence, and anger any writer would give their male protagonists. Knowing the porn industry, Faust walks us through the off-stage parts of the industry, she gives us killer punk bands, porn stars, drug addicts, white slavery, sex, violence, shoot-outs, and really bad fashions, and she does it all with a lack of sleaze, and in a non-sensationalistic matter of factness that a lot of better know writers couldn't even begin to approach. Dare is a tough-as-nails anti-hero with-a-heart-of-brass; the more she's hammered, the tougher and more determined she gets. She and Lalo move from one target to another, and moving up the chain of crooks, leaving each bunch wasted in their wake, the upper crust of the scum are getting nervous while still trying to track down the stolen money.
Dare and Lalo aren't superheroes, only succeeding sometimes by a very thin hair, sheer determination, and by being underestimating by their foes. If there anything that is really wrong with the novel it is the eventual fate of Lalo, but you can't have everything. Faust has enough common sense not pad this lean, tough novel up until the five hundred, or more, page number. She keeps everything moving smoothly, on target, and doesn't deviate with useless inconsequentials, or with useless details, all with more skill than some writers who have been writing twice or three times as long. The title of this review is a quote directly from the book. I haven't read anything else by Faust, and it's been a year since I read this, so I may be a bit vague on some of the details, but this novel has earned every star of this five star review. I feel genuinely sorry for those sad, sad people who can't enjoy or appreciate this novel. And what a hell of a cover.
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