Vicki Hendricks has been dubbed the high priestess of neo-noir. This novel is a modern take on classic noir themes. Just as classic noir characters hurtle downward in a never-ending spiral of despair and destruction, Hendricks strips her characters of all normalcy and balance and tilts them into a world of sexual obsession and into new cages that replace old ones. But, this is not the classic fifties pulp which hints at and tantalizes the reader. It is filled to the brim with sex, booze, and casual murder and it focuses on the sex quite explicitly. Strangely enough, the blood and gore which you would think would be at the eye of this hurricane are simply casually tossed out as if to show where these characters have fallen in their twisted depravity. Willeford may have peopled the Florida coast with crime and bizarre persons, but Hendricks adds in a boa constrictor and ten foot alligators as well as gun-wielding call girls and sex-crazed English professors. ( )

Revolving around an alluring, amoral Miami Beach prostitute, this is a somewhat bold, sex-laden crime story that has some interesting, if not partiucularly sympathetic, characters and some nice plot touches that flesh things out. ( )

I think some of VH's blurb-ers are a little too easily impressed with all that sex. Yes, there's a ton of it and yes, some of it is pretty imaginative. But if you look to the rest of the book, it's basically a cleverly-plotted Florida crime spree with some stock characters and not the most consistent writing in the world.

So you have these odious people: Richard, the aging poet whose dreams of success have given way to boredom and contempt for his life - Renny, the beautiful but damaged and emotionally-vacant, sybaritic prostitute - Jules, the voyeuristic, self-hating, weak wastrel, and Francisco, Renny's lover and the only character even remotely sympathetic. Add some bad guys that seem like they came out of Hiassen's green room - but without the irony...a jealous wife who acts like a drunk zombie - oh, why bother with the rest.

Like I said, the series of events is quite clever - the way a single act of fear and desperation leads to ever-darker crimes and decisions, until the end leaves dead bodies lying about like the stage of a Greek tragedy. But it isn't enough.

Specifically:
Why all the sex? It's so gratuitous - Renny is a cartoon, a blow-up doll of sexual availability, so unrealistic as to be dull. Does the sex mean something - stand for something - represent something else - if so, it was lost on me. If the theme is that men, and occasionally women, make themselves crazy over a sexually captivating and beautiful young woman, then this story doesn't really elevate itself above Penthouse Letters. If the message is that pure hedonism is a legitimate choice for those bereft of love and nurturing - same argument, with a sort of Nin flavor.

Second, the voice. It's not terrible, it's not bad, it's quite adequate - but for a book that took five years to write, it's not special enough. There is little to distinguish the internal narrative voice of each of the 3 POV characters from each other - Richard and Jules in particular sound like the same person. The prose and dialog are unornamented and flat, which is okay for noir, but the effect is dull rather than stark and compelling.

Returning to Richard for a moment - I found him utterly unsympathetic and detestable. Bad enough that he is a fool...but the man has kids and despite pages and pages spent in his fevered mind, their names and ages are never revealed and he seems utterly indifferent to their fate other than as part of the package he is leaving behind. Any comment being made on the nature of the value of family in the face of searing desire was completely ruined for me by this ommission. ( )