Christa Faust, “Money Shot”

Money Shot by Christa Faust (Hard Case Crime 2008). Ex-porn star, Angel Dare is hav­ing a really bad day. She arrives at a phony shoot and finds her­self beat up, shot at and then left for dead in the trunk of a car.

To make mat­ters worse, she doesn’t even know what the hell’s going on when she later learns that she’s a mur­der sus­pect, too. Yeah, mad doesn’t even begin to cover it. To quote Angel Dare:

I was so angry, it felt almost like love. Angry for being made to feel help­less and scared. Angry for hav­ing my nice com­fort­able life torn opened and sav­aged and left bleed­ing. Angry for get­ting the shit kicked out of me and Sam, too, all for some­thing I didn’t even under­stand. I knew what I wanted to do. Find them and kill them.

For­mer porn star, Angel Dare had been liv­ing a really nice life before it all went to hell. After 9 or 10 years in the porn indus­try, she now runs a suc­cess­ful high class adult mod­el­ing agency in LA, called Dar­ing Angels. One phone call from her men­tor and friend, Sam, con­vinces her to do one last shoot for old times sake.

Creep­ing up on forty, Angel is look­ing her age. While she still works out and keeps her­self in rea­son­ably good phys­i­cal shape, as she says, “being around all those gor­geous nine­teen year-olds some­times gets to me. Makes a girl feel like yesterday’s news.” To buoy her self-esteem, Angel’s will­ing to show off the goods that made her a star in the first place. Unfor­tu­nately, this deci­sion changes her life forever.

Left for dead in the trunk of a Civic, Angel vows revenge. She is aided by Lalo Mal­loy, an ex-cop who now works as secu­rity for her mod­els. Angel allows Mal­loy to take the driver’s seat in help­ing her track down the men who set her up and destroyed her life. Turns out that the bad guys were look­ing for a brief case full of money. Stolen money that was apart of a sex racket involv­ing the ille­gal smug­gling of for­eign girls into the U.S for prostitution.

“Money Shot” moves at a brisk pace and with plenty of sur­prises. The story is told through Angel’s eyes via first per­son nar­ra­tive that worked very well. The author seems to know her sub­ject mat­ter well with the porn indus­try as the back­drop. Angel along with the other char­ac­ters, lived and breathed off the page.

Angel Dare is a smart, kick-ass hero­ine with her share of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. She pro­vides us with wise-cracking com­men­tary on the porn indus­try and her per­sonal life. She often uses, some­what col­or­ful lan­guage. I didn’t really like a cou­ple of things in the story and was thor­oughly shocked and dis­ap­pointed in one plot twist hence the lower grade.

And while the end­ing was real­is­tic, I didn’t like it much either. Did Angel Dare achieve her goals? You have to read it to find out. Any­way, this story rocked from start to fin­ish. B+. Christa Faust has made me a fan after read­ing one book. Alas, I didn’t see a dig­i­tal ver­sion of this won­der­ful story any­where which is unfor­tu­nate. Paper­back avail­able wher­ever paper­backs are sold.

Edited: Removed spoiler that I had cov­ered.
Edited to men­tion that Super Librar­ian Wendy (and awe­some blog­ger) actu­ally rec­om­mended this book to me.

For Fur­ther Reading

• REVIEW: Old Boy, Vol. 1 by Tsuchiya Garon
• Mis­sion Flats, William Lan­day {Guest Review}
• Manga Mon­day: ES (Eter­nal Sab­bath), Fuyumi Soryo
• Man­hunt­ing, Jen­nifer Crusie
• ‘The Ghosts of Belfast,’ Stu­art Neville
• Ken Bruen, “The Drama­tist,” Jack Tay­lor No.4
• “When Love Isn’t Enough” by Kath­leen Gilles Seidel
• REVIEW: I’ll Bury My Dead by James Hadley Chase
• A New Dex­ter Book and Promo Web­site for Gretchen Low­ell Fans
• REVIEW: Evil At Heart (Beauty Killer Series No.3) by Chelsea Cain