Review: Choke Hold

Choke Hold by Christa Faust
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Yet another 2011 Bouchercon story about how Kemper-Met-An-Author….

Christa Faust was one of the speakers at a panel on sex and violence that was being held later than any other discussions, but there’d been some kind of snafu and the room wasn’t set up ahead of time. It was Miss Faust who took charge, ascertained that somebody had screwed the pooch, led the effort to commandeer another room, and essentially had moved everyone down the hall and got the whole thing going within about ten minutes. And she did all of this while wearing a dress tight enough to kill most mortals. After watching her in action, I was pretty sure that if zombies had burst into the convention hall, Miss Faust would have whipped off her high heels to use as skull impaling weapons against the undead and led us all to safety.

The next day, she walked up while I was chatting with another author to see if he’d be attending her next panel about fighting sports like boxing and crime fiction. When I asked if there would be actual fighting at the panel, she launched into an imitation of a professional wrestler ranting about all the ways she was going to destroy everyone in the room.

Later on, Dan had accompanied me to get some books signed by her, and she admired the Hard Case Crime shirt he was wearing while showing off her own HCC tattoo, and then she did a hilarious bit about how she’d been forbidden from using the profanity she wanted in the Supernatural tie-in novel she’d done.

In other words, Christa Faust is the shit.

And by the way, she writes a pretty mean hard boiled crime novel, too.

In her previous HCC book Money Shot we met Angel Dare, a retired porn star who was now an agent for others in the adult entertainment industry. Poor Angel got mixed up with some very bad people, and the ensuing events left her life in ruins. Now she’s hiding out and working in a diner under an assumed name in Arizona. Angel gets a shock when a former boyfriend and fellow veteran of the porn industry Thick Vic walks in. A few minutes later she gets an even bigger surprise when a gunfight breaks out in the diner.

Angel ends up on the run with Vic’s son Cody as they flee from a local gangster. Cody is a mixed martial arts fighter whose big break is waiting for him in Vegas in a few days if he can make it there alive. Along with Cody’s trainer, a punch drunk former fighter, Angel will have to confront some very dangerous men as well as her own past.

Angel is a unique character to base a crime novel around. As a former porn star, she wields her body as an asset to be used, and seemingly doesn’t let trading sex for favors bother her. However, she also uses the sex as a way of distancing herself from her own emotions. She’s tough and capable, but she’s not an ass kicking super woman.

The plot doesn’t end up anywhere near where I thought it was going, and I was genuinely surprised by the ending. Christa Faust doesn’t pull her punches, and Angel’s story here is as painful and brutal as a swift jab to the nose.

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