Just Finished Reading: Money Shot by Christa Faust

Called back to do one last job, ex-porn star Angel Dare ends up beaten, raped, shot and left for dead. After being tortured for information she does not possess she is determined to find out exactly why a group of strangers have just tried to kill her. Relying on the only man she can trust and hiding both from the police and her would be assassins, Angel must re-enter the sleazy world of cheap porn in order to uncover the identities of the people behind an illegal underage trafficking ring after one of the victim’s calls on her for help. Leaving a trail of bodies in their wake Angel and her ex-cop friend slowly make their way up the criminal hierarchy. But can they survive long enough in what has become literally a cut-throat business?

This was my first foray into the Hard Case Crime series of books. Despite looking forward to the 50’s writing style I actually decided to start with Faust’s book which was first published in 2008. I think that I definitely should have had the courage of my convictions because Money Shot didn’t really float my boat. It was readable enough and the character of Angel Dare was fairly well constructed but did it drag quite a lot in more than one place. All of the elements of a good thriller were present but there seemed to be a decided lack of pace or a sense of much danger. Saying that, I did think that some of the set-pieces where well done and Angel was given some good one liners to use whenever confronted with a bad guy she needed to take down a peg or two – usually just before she shot them. A reasonable read though I’m hoping that the rest of the series is better than this single example.