Title: Choke Hold
Author: Christa Faust
Publisher: Hard Case Crime
Published: October 4th , 2011
Where I got the book: Murder by the Book

From the back cover:

INSIDE THE WORLD OF MIXED MARTIAL ARTS – AND MURDER…

Angel Dare went into Witness Protection to escape her past — not as a porn star, but as a killer who took down the sex slavery ring that destroyed her life. But sometimes the past just won’t stay buried.

When a former co-star is gunned down, it’s up to Angel to get his son, a hotheaded MMA fighter, safely through the unforgiving Arizona desert, shady Mexican border towns, and the seductive neon mirage of Las Vegas…

Review:

I’m a little shocked that it’s taken me so long to post my review of this book. Before I get started, let’s take a moment and remember how much I loved Money Shot. I recall calling it “the perfect epitome of what modern pulp fiction can be.” Choke Hold is the much anticipated (at least by me) sequel to Money Shot. Angel Dare is back and she’s laying low after the events in the first book. But after running into a former flame, things turn south and she gets wrapped up in the world of illegal fights and drug smuggling.

In this book Angel has less control of the situation. While in Money Shot she was the one planning the course of action and executing it, Choke Hold takes her on a journey where she just happens to get wrapped up in it and goes with the flow. The result was a character that seemed less like a fierce independent woman, which is one of the things I loved about the first book, and more like someone who is a tad bit helpless. It kind of makes since Angel is a fish out of water in the world of MMA fighting while she knew the ins-and-outs of the adult film industry in Money Shot. Near the end of Choke Hold, Angel does take control but instead of fighting, she chooses to run away to safety. Choke Hold felt like a step down in terms of Angel’s character development.

However, those are just my personal issues with the book. If you can look past that (which I was able to), Choke Hold is the return of one of my favorite characters. This book is quickly paced and full of action. It never slows down or stays in one place for too long. What I’m trying to say is that it was a book that I found hard to put down once I picked it up.

Closing Thoughts: I could easily see this developing into a series of books that follow Angel Dare. This I would be okay with.

Question: What seedy underworld will Angel get mixed up with if there is a third book?

No House Limit
by Steve Fisher
Hard Case Crime, July 2008 (originally published in 1958)
224 pages

A casino, in my opinion, is one of the best places to set your story. The casino environment allows you to bring together a wide cast of characters who are only brought together by the allure of slow machines, blackjack dealers, and the roulette table. There are the people who work at the casinos: pit bosses, cocktail waitresses, and piano players which add the mix of senior citizens and guys who are down on their luck. I like stories centered around casinos is what I am trying to get at.

I picked No House Limit by Steve Fisher to take with me on my trip to Reno, Nevada. It seemed fitting. While No House Limit takes place in Las Vegas and not Reno, it does center around a casino run by Joe Martin. Joe’s run in to problems by the Syndicate who don’t like that his casino isn’t part of their operation. The Syndicate launches a full scale attack on Joe’s casino over the course of a few days in an attempt to bring him down. Counterfeit chips, double agents, trick dice, and Bello, the world’s most famous gambler. Bello begins his assault on the casino by playing Craps and attempts to bust the house. Needless to say, Joe is a little stressed out about the situation.

While not as gritty as some other pulp fiction i’ve read, it still incorporates other notable elements such as femme fatales and brutish thugs. There are two things that really stood out while reading No House Limit. The first was that the story took place over the course of three days. It keeps track of Joe over the three days and you read about how little sleep Joe gets and how it effects him. It almost felt like a 1950′s novelization of the television show 24 but with less torture.

The other interesting thing that stood out was how the book handled informational the reader may not be familiar with. How much to you know about craps? Or baccarat? I don’t know much about either but Fisher handled this very well by giving the reader a brief rundown of how those games work. He didn’t overload it with information that would slow down the pace of the book or bore the reader. It was normally just a paragraph or two at the beginning of the chapter where the casino game was played by the characters. Fisher only provides you with what you need to know so the reader can understand what is happening on the casino table.

No House Limit is an exciting read. The whole time I was wondering whether or not Joe was going to lose his casino, keep it, or trade it all in for something worth wild. While not as hardcore as other noir i’ve read, it is still one of the best. My biggest complaint after finishing the book is that there are no other books by Fisher in print. Steve Fisher, from what I can piece together, primarily wrote screenplays (Lady in the Lake and Dead Reckoning to name a few). He’s the author of I Wake Up Screaming but it’s out-of-print at the moment. I hope more of his works get printed in the near future.

Fright
by Cornell Woolrich
Hard Case Crime, August 2007 (Originally Published in 1950)
254 pages

Imagine living in a constant state of fear. Every moment of your day, anytime a person speaks to you, the only thing that crosses your mind is that they know your deepest, darkest secret and will expose you. That’s basically the story behind Fright by Cornell Woolrich. Prescott Marshall is getting married but on a night out he had a little too much to drink and ends up taking a woman back home with him. In the weeks that follow she begins blackmailing him, threatening to tell his soon-to-be wife about their night together. Prescott ends up killing his blackmailer just hours before his wedding and leaves New York once they are man and wife, afraid somebody will link him to the body that will be discovered in the closet of the apartment he was renting. He hopes to run away from his problem but when a mysterious man suddenly shows up at work, paranoia takes over and Prescott will do whatever it takes to get some peace of mind.

Starting off, this book started off on the slow side. It wasn’t until around page 50 when the tension started to rise. After that it’s one thing after another as I watched Prescott trying to cover his tracks. Because of he forced his wife to move away from the only city she had known, New York, she is discontent and lonely when they movie to a small town. Reading this book is like waiting for water to boil. It starts out with just a simmer but by the time you reach the end, the water is boiling like crazy.

This is the second book I’ve read by Cornell Woolrich. The first was The Black Angel, one of my favorite pulp fiction novels because it stars a woman as the lead character trying to prove her husband’s innocents. He also wrote the story It Had to Be Murder which later become the Hitchcock film Read Window.

Second Opinions:
Somebody Dies
Rough Edges

Money Shot
by Christa Faust
Hard Case Crime, January 2008
250 Pages

Don’t you just love a solid female protagonist who spends the whole novel kicking ass and taking names? I know I do. In Christa Faust‘s Money Shot that’s exactly what happens.

Former porn star Angel Dare was beaten, shot and left for dead. As the men responsible soon find out, they should have been more thorough because she isn’t dead. And what’s more, now she’s pissed. She doesn’t understand how she got involved in this mess but she’s going to find out by hunting down the men responsible. And thus begins Angel’s vendetta that will lead her across state lines and through the seedier aspects of the porn industry, to discover just how far anger can take a person.

It’s a very Kill Bill-esq story but it’s very fun to read. One of the things that surprised me about this book is it’s lack of technology. You know how classic pulp fiction novels take place in the 40′s or at sometime where you had to go good old fashion sleuthing to get to the bottom of things? In Money Shot the author manages to stay true to pulp fiction’s roots and never relies heavily on computers or other CSI devices. Because of that this book feels faithful to the genre.

This book is the perfect epitome of what modern pulp fiction can be. It’s gritty, violent, sexy, and is character driven. If you’re a fan of these types of stories then you owe it to yourself to check it out. I also discovered that Christa Faust is writing a follow up called Choke Hold due out in October 2011 through one of my favorite publishers, Hard Case Crime. I’m excited for the return of Angel Dare.