Money Shot by Faust
Money Shot (2008)
by Christa Faust
250 pages - Hard Case Crime

Angel Dare is a retired porn star who now runs an agency that handles female talent. An old friend asks her to come out of retirement to do a scene, but when she shows up she is beaten, raped, shot, and left for dead in the trunk of a car. She manages to survive, but her entire world changes as she tries to hunt down the people that did this to her and are now also targeting her friends, tries to track down the suitcase of money they are all after, and needs to dodge the law since she has been framed for various crimes.

Obviously, going by the cheeky title and the plot line, this isn't going to be an in-depth, introspective novel; it's a page-turner, and does pretty well at creating a mood and moving the action forward (almost every chapter ends with a teaser where I felt like I *had* to keep reading). The momentum of the story does slow a bit in the second half, but it's still a pretty satisfying light read. Needless to say, because of the world of the protagonist there's quite a bit of swearing and other risque content, though it's still very much a hardboiled crime book. None of the characters seem to have any second thoughts about revenge killing.

I think the main fault of the book that kept sticking out is that Malloy, the part-time security guy that helps out the protagonist, and becomes the second most prominent character in the story, is never fleshed out very much and seems like a blank slate with James Bond-like abilities -- both to outfight and outwit the enemy -- whenever they're needed. I also would have liked to have seen more exploration of the atmosphere and setting of Los Angeles, especially the seedier side of it. I know pulp novels place an economy on words, but more attention to the setting would have enriched the novel greatly.

This is the first time I've read anything from Hard Case Crime, a publisher devoted to both re-printing old hardboiled pulp classics and publishing new books with the same spirit. They're obviously not as challenging as the 'great works of literature', but I can see myself reading more of these.