Tag: crime

Gone by Dawn + Gone by Dawn 2: Dead by Dusk

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Gone by Dawn ★★★½
Gone by Dawn 2: Dead by Dusk ★★½
“Stripped to kill.”

I decided I might as well combine these two into a single review. Having watched them back-to-back, even though made and set three years apart, they felt very much like the continuation of a single story about the same characters. The main one is Roxy (Mele), who is a dancer at a Wisconsin strip-club run by the sleazy Stag (Therrien), mostly as a money-laundering front for local organized crime. When he and his pal rape an employee, Alana (Pearce), Roxy along with the victim and another dancer, Crystal (Fierman), decide to take revenge by robbing Stag. That means getting into the safe in his office where the money is, and he’s not exactly going to give up the combination freely. Still, nothing that a piano-wire garrotte round the testicles can’t solve, surely? Except, as usual in this genre, the heist doesn’t go smoothly. Stag’s office quickly begins to resemble a mortuary, as unwelcome guests need to be handled.

This was, to be honest, better than I expected. There is, of course, the usual tension in grindhouse-style films about strippers – wanting them to be seen as more than T&A… while simultaneously being required to depict them as T&A. But the movie manages to strike a good balance here: while certainly not short on nudity, the lead actresses deliver performances which manage to make their characters feel like real people. The script also avoids people having to act like idiots too much, and the issue of the safe’s combination is solved in a way which is actually kinda clever. The low budget is a bit obvious in the limited locations and cast – we don’t get much outside of the club and an apartment – although in some ways, that works as much for the feature as against it. For example, it’s likely a factor in story-telling which certainly doesn’t hang around; maybe 65 minutes between opening and closing credits. And while there may be honour among thieves, there doesn’t appear to be much among strippers.

I didn’t think the sequel worked as well. While Roxy returns, she has been recast, being now played by Matheis – I’m not sure what happened to Mele. Still, I did laugh when one supporting character greets her with, “You look different!” Oddly, while the first film started with Roxy skipping town, the second sees her back, working at the same venue where she was involved in a multiple homicide. I know strippers are renowned for making poor decisions, but still… It turns out, having absconded with nine hundred grand of the mob’s money isn’t a good idea. They want it back, and to this end, have sent a trio of hired killers, named the Three Bears by Roxy. They’re prepared to do anything, up to and including both kidnapping and murder. But Roxy, along with Jesse (Radzion), a friend of Alana’s, and another dancer, Alura (Laventure), plots to turn the tables on the Three Bears, by robbing their boss.

Quite why the mob waited three years to take any action isn’t clear, and it’s just one of the problems with the story. Remember how I said the small-scale worked for the first film? That feels less true here, with the expanded script resulting in a bunch of loose ends and an unnecessarily stretched running-time of 107 minutes. For instance, we are introduced to a pair of cops, but they’re effectively unnecessary, and the same goes for a subplot which has Roxy visiting Stag in prison (one of the few players to return from the first film). Generally, I think I preferred Roxy 1.0 as well; I was just never quite convinced by Matheis in the role of an exotic dancer. The bits that work e.g. the ‘snake in the grass’ are mostly borrowed from its predecessor, though again, the movie does a good job with its characters.

Together, they make for a decent double-bill, though if you’re short on time, you might as well watch only the opener, since the sequel adds little in the way of development.  It’s perhaps telling that I must confess to getting distracted in the middle of GBD 2 by a lengthy article on location Club Pierre, one of the oldest strip-clubs in Edmonton. So, not Wisconsin at all. :) But it probably says something when a movie’s location is more interesting that the film.

Dir: Shaun Donnelly
Star: Gone by Dawn – Saleste Mele, Hannah Fierman, Katelyn Pearce, Jayson Therrien
Gone by Dawn 2: Dead by Dusk – Allana Matheis, Skylar Radzion, Ashley Laventure, Koreen Perry

Stripped Naked

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★★★
“Firmly dressed to kill”

Even if the film doesn’t quite live up to the title and poster, it turned out to be better than I expected… from the title and poster, to be honest. It has been my experience that, the more lurid the advertising, the more disappointed I’m likely to be. Films like this often don’t just fail to deliver on what they promise, they also struggle with basic aspects of film-making, like plot and characterization, providing a double-whammy of failure. While the former is true here (no-one, at any point, is ever stripped naked), the underlying construction proved to be solid enough to keep me watching and engaged, to a greater degree than I was anticipating.

Cassie (Allen) gets dumped out of the car after a bitter argument with boyfriend, Jack (Cor). Seeking help from another car, she finds herself in the middle of a drug-deal which goes horribly wrong for everybody else. This leaves her in possession of $90,000 in cash, and about the same value of meth, providing a potential way out of her job as a “professional undresser”, shall we say. However, Jack finds the money in Cassie’s house, which she shares with fellow dancer, Jade (Pirie), and the former owner of the money sends a hitman (Slacke, looking like a low-rent version of Bill Oberst Jr.) to recover it. It’s not long before the bodies start piling up, and Cassie realizes she has bit off more than she can chew.

From the sex-and-violence angle, this is remarkably tame. Despite being strippers, both Cassie and Kyle seems remarkably attached to their clothes. There is some secondary nudity from the background, but on the whole, the story could have had them be waitresses, without the slightest impact. It also takes Cassie a while to tap into the inner bitch she needs to be, for survival, but that does become an increasing part of her character as the film develops. One incident in particular had me remarking, “Good riddance to bad rubbish.” There’s another interesting dynamic present, in the shape of Kyla (Cinthia Burke), one half of the sibling team who run the venue where Cassie works, and who turns out to have a murky past of her own.

It’s characters like these which make it work. Kyla and brother Howie (Linden Ashby), for example, are not your prototypical sleazy strip-club owners, being rather kinder than generally depicted. Cassie and Jade both have unexpected depths, too, though I do have qualms about the latter’s eyebrows, which have been tweezed into near-oblivion. Jack is probably the most underdrawn and, consequentially, least-interesting character. The plot unfolds along the lines you’d expect, though the final reel delivers some unexpected twists, and not everyone you think is going to survive, ends up doing so. Had this actually provided the heady mix of grindhouse elements promised by the title, poster and trailer (below), it could have been a classic, rather than the acceptable way to pass the time it turns out to be.

Dir: Lee Demarbre
Star: Sarah Allen, Jon Cor, Tommie-Amber Pirie, Mark Slacke

La Reina Del Sur: season two

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★★★½
“The Queen comes home”

Nine years after the events of the first series, Teresa Mendoza (del Castillo) is no longer in the world of crime. She lives in Italy under a new identity, where she makes marmalade, has a hunky boyfriend and is concerned more with bringing up her daughter, Sofia (Sierra). But where would the telenovela fun be in that? Therefore. it’s not long before Sofia is kidnapped, and used as leverage to drag Teresa back into the murky world of narcotrafico. Except, it’s as much a political game this time, with her previous adversary, Epifanio Vargas (Zurita), is now running for President of Mexico. He orders Teresa to bring down the main rival for that position, by joining the gang of the drug-lord who is backing his rival’s campaign, and finding evidence which can exposie their connection. It’s not even that “simple”, with a lot of people who have long-standing scores to settle with Teresa, and the DEA lurking in the background, pulling strings on behalf of the American government.

It is certainly quite jet-setty. Perhaps because of del Castillo’s well-documented problems with the Mexican government, I’m not sure how many of her scenes were actually filmed locally. As well as Italy, it bounces around between her old stomping-ground of Malaga, Spain and Russia (reuniting Mendoza with Russian mob ally, Oleg Yosikov (Gil), though eventually settles down with the bulk of the action does take place in Mexico. There, Teresa has to round up some other old pals, to give her the necessary resources to infiltrate her target. Meanwhile, Sofia is proving quite the chip off the old block, and causing no end of problems for her captors – who include someone playing a rather dangerous double- or even triple-game. However, despite the plethora of plot threads – and the above is well short of being an exhaustive list – the script does generally pull off a very good job of delineating them without confusion.

Initially, it seemed like we might be in for a more action-oriented brand of Teresa, the first episode (embedded at the bottom, with English subs) ending with her chasing a car on a motor-bike and a rather spectacular stunt. Sadly, it only sustains this pace intermittently thereafter. To make up, we do get the very impressive Manuela, a.k.a Kira, played by Paola Núñez. A disgruntled former DEA agent, she’s one of those with a grudge against Ms. Mendoza, holding her responsible for the death of some family members. She’s definitely a bad-ass, and it’s always a pleasure seeing her and Teresa go toe-to-toe. There were some aspects of the story I did have issues with. For instance, in about a two-episode spell, we get three different cases of someone who should be dead, turning out not to be. That gets old. But all told, it’s a nicely-paced bit of television, that sustained my interest over its 60 episodes – even if it took me approaching six months to get through them all.

Star: Kate del Castillo, Humberto Zurita, Antonio Gil, Isabella Sierra

Truck Stop Women

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★★★
“Blood is thicker than water. But gasoline is thicker still.”

Ostensibly, Anna (Dressler) runs a New Mexico truck-stop, catering to drivers and ensuring they are kept fed and watered as they run their rigs across country. However, she has several more lucrative businesses. It seems that a majority of her waitresses, for example, moonlight as hookers in the brothel Anna runs. But the key side-line of work is sending her gals out to lure in unsuspecting truckers, typically with an alluring combination of fake breakdowns and tight shorts. When the truckers stop, their vehicles are hijacked, the contents stolen and the trucks themselves repainted and sold on.

It’s this which brings Anna to the attention of the East coast mafia, who send over a couple of goons to muscle in and make Anna an offer she can’t refuse. Not helping matters, Anna’s daughter, Rose (Jennings), is tired of being Mom’s servant, and wants her independence, so hooks up with Smith (Martino), one of the goons. When Anna gets word of a truck carrying bearer bonds passing through her territory, she starts to plan her biggest heist ever. But can Rose be trusted to play her part? Or will she be prepared to sacrifice her own family, in order to exchange roadside life in New Mexico for the bright, big city lights of Las Vegas?

This is generally a brisk, breezy film, which managed to beat Convoy to the punch by four years. The soundtrack is pure country-and-western cheese, songs about the joys of trucks and trucking, and relentlessly upbeat [performed by Bobby Hart, at the time Claudia Jennings’s boyfriend]. This becomes horribly inappropriate at the film’s end: without spoiling it, there’s the death of one major character, and we immediately cut to the end credits, playing out over yet another relentlessly upbeat song about the joys of trucks and trucking. Ouch. In general though, this is entertaining nonsense. It’s particularly notable for the way it portrays working class Southern rednecks in a generally positive way. Ok, outside of the whole “career criminal” thing. For they are depicted as smart – Anna especially –  and certainly more moral than the mob muscle, who are trigger-happy from the very opening scene.

Things are spearheaded by the presence of B-movie queen Jennings, already present on this site for The Great Texas Dynamite Chase, Unholy Rollers and ‘Gator Bait. Though getting less screen-time than her mom,. Rose is the highly watchable centre around which the plot revolves. For you’re never quite sure where her loyalties lie, right up until the final scene. Is she passing information from Anna to the mafia? Or the other way round? Or both? Throw in a healthy amount of female nudity (not least notably from Russ Meyer favorite Uschi Digard) and you’ve got a film which, if unable to spell the word “subtlety”, couldn’t be much more drive-in if it tried.

Fun fact: this film played a role in wrecking the presidential aspirations of Texas senator Phil Gramm in 1995. It came out that  in the seventies he had become “interested in investing in what he called ‘sexploitation’ films after a private viewing of the film.” Yeah, Jennings had that effect on a lot of people.

Dir: Mark L. Lester
Star: Lieux Dressler, Claudia Jennings, Dennis Fimple, John Martino

Pickings

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★★
“Pap fiction.”

I am not a fan of Quentin Tarantino, outside of Kill Bill. Even as early as Reservoir Dogs, I found his style to be self-indulgent, and could never hear his characters speaking in their own voices, only QT’s. He seems to be capable only of cobbling together elements and influences from obscure, yet generally superior movies, and sprinkling them with pop-culture riffs and dialogue that’s so fake-sounding and artificial, it needs a warning label. So, while I appreciate the irony of someone ripping off the master of rip-off cinema, as Morgan does here, it’s not a world into which I willingly travel.

The influence here is palpable from the opening scene, when bar owner Jo Lee-Haywood (Price) is interrogating a thug she has captured and, it turns out, is tied up in a backroom of the bar she runs. Jo ends up talking about motivational speaker Tony Robbins, and how everyone is motivated by pleasure or fear, in a speech which couldn’t be more Quentin Tarantino, if it were licking the heroine’s bare feet. More or less from then on, it seemed painfully apparent this was the kind of film I was going to have to endure, rather than enjoy. And that was largely correct.

Jo, it turns out, is in debt to some rather nasty people, in particular a gangster named Sam “Hollywood” Barone (Urbas). He sends his henchmen to make Jo and her daughter, Scarlet (Vincent), an offer they can’t refuse, involving handing over the bar. Only, Jo is all, “Nah, we’re good, thanks,” and is having none of it. For she is not exactly the innocent bar-owner she seems, but came to the small Michigan town in order to escape a particularly brutal past. This isn’t her first time at the crime rodeo, shall we say – as we find out via another Tarantino-esque device, the needlessly convoluted time-line.

Morgan also appears to be a fan of Sin City, throwing in stylistic flourishes such as switching to rotoscoped animation at random. Most of these are more aggrandisements than art, save for Hollywood always being depicted in black-and-white. That’s a great way of indicating his status as a character straight out of film noir. The rest, though? Style for the sake of it, down to the cribbing of musical cues lifted from Morricone scored spaghetti Westerns, and a character who seems to have wandered straight off those same dusty streets. 

And it’s a shame, as in Jo, the film has a character which could have been a classic – even if the whole “left in a coma” thing is also cribbed from a certain QT film you’ve probably seen. Price plays her character like a velvet glove cast in iron (that’s one cult film not referenced!), and it soon becomes apparent that, when it comes to protecting Scarlet, Jo has no limits. Exploring this aspect, rather than making both story-line and players subservient to the movie’s look and feel, would have helped avoid this coming over like a fan submission to TarantinoCon 2018.

Dir: Usher Morgan
Star: Elyse Price, Yaron Urbas, Katie Vincent, Joe Trombino

Blow a Kiss

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★★½
“Too little, too late.”

You could skip the first 30-45 minutes of this, and it really would not affect your enjoyment level significantly. It seems to be one of those cases where the director is far more in love with the dialogue and characters than they deserves, and so we have to sit through far too much flapping of jaws by the latter, delivering the former in inane and uninteresting conversation, before we get to the meat of the story. Which is, as follows.

Homeless, failed ballerina Joy Malone (Berkshire), who just lost custody of her child, is drowning her sorrows in a dive bar, when she encounters local meth dealer, Samantha (Tutor), who offers her a way out of her dire straits. For Sam is in a war with another dealer, Marcus Mitchell (Martinez), and needs a replacement killer after having recently discovered – in the bar’s bathroom – that one of her gang was actually working for the opposition. Sam offers to pay Joy all the money she needs to get her kid back. All she has to do is kill Mitchell. Of course, it’s never as easy as that.

I’ve not heard of Mauser, but turns out he’s a prolific film-maker, whose site lists Kiss as his 37th (!) feature. That’s impressive, almost regardless of quality. And it’s possible this might have appealed more if I’d seen the previous 36. For instance, I suspect the presence of a psychotic killer in a giant bunny costume here, is a nod to his Serial Rabbit franchise, which has reached five movies. [Who knew?] On its own, though, there wasn’t enough to sustain my interest. For example, while I’m always down for an all-girl gang, we first meet the one here in an extended interrogation sequence, trying to extract Mitchell’s location from one of his henchmen. I suspect this is trying to be Tarantino-esque. It is – only in that it’s incredibly annoying and self-indulgent.

Just when I was close to giving up on this entirely as a flick which didn’t require a microscope to detect any entertainment value… Joy and Sam connect, and the rest of the film is actually not too bad, for a low-budget romp. There are a couple of ways I thought this might go: the striking red hair of both Sam and Joy seemed so consciously similar, I expected some kind of impersonation twist. Instead, it’s just Joy having to make her way up against Mitchell – at least until the truth is revealed.

Avoiding spoilers for that last section, means I can’t say too much about the finale, which is probably the best, and certainly the most energetic (read: least chatty), part of proceedings. I did also like the way what appears to be a police interview of Joy in the wake of everything, turns out to be… not quite that. However, you need just too much patience to get to the decent stuff, and I certainly wouldn’t blame anyone who cut and ran after the first half-hour.

Dir: Brett William Mauser
Star: Dane Berkshire, Cassandra Tutor, Karen Roberge, Ernest Martinez

The Kitchen

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★★½
“Rather over-baked”

Regardless of its flaws, this does at least show that comic-book adaptations needn’t involve superheroes and Thanos snaps. This is instead a crime story, beginning towards the end of the seventies in Hell’s Kitchen, a working-class area of New York. Following a failed armed robbery, the husbands of Kathy (McCarthy), Ruby (Haddish) and Claire (Moss) are sent to jail, leaving the wives to fend for themselves. To make ends meet, the trio begin to move in on the territory of local boss Little Jackie, who has been taking money from local businesses, without delivering the promised protection. When Jackie goes after them, he is killed by the women’s ally, Gabriel (Gleeson), who begins a relationship with Claire. But the husbands’ return to Hell’s Kitchen looms on the horizon, as the women’s growing power also brings them unwelcome attention – both from the authorities and the Mafia who dominate the city.

More than slightly reminiscent of Widows, this is considerably less plausible. The area at the time was controlled by the Westies, a powerful Irish-American group, and the film gives you little or no reason to believe why they’d roll over and let a bunch of amateurs – and women at that – muscle in and take over. In reality, I strongly suspect they’d be squashed like bugs at the first collection of protection money. One woman leading a crew might be possible (see Dangerous Lady for a good example); tripling down, as the movie does, stretches credibility to breaking point. It doesn’t help that there is only one decent character arc between them. That belongs to Claire, who goes from abused wife and perpetual victim, to the group’s enforcer under the tutelage of Gabriel. One of the film’s best scenes has him giving a lesson on dismembering a body to dispose of it. Kathy can’t watch at all, and Ruby is similarly appalled; Claire is entirely fascinated. It’s clear something has been awakened inside. And her incarcerated husband isn’t going to like it much.

It’s a shame she is largely relegated to the sidelines, being the most interesting of the trio – as well as the one most suited to this site, as the poster suggests. Instead, it’s mostly the blandly uninteresting Kathy who takes centre-stage. Even Ruby would have been an improvement, her black heritage adding an element of racial tension, with her husband’s family reluctant to accept her into their bosom. We’re also asked to accept them as heroines without explanation, ignoring the inherently scummy nature of the protection racket which they operate. But they’re nice about it, so that’s okay! Then again, I’ve never bought into the “They’re just taking care of their family” excuse, especially when, as here, efforts to get gainful, legal employment are all but absent. Berloff seems to be aiming for a Scorsese-like approach, down to the use of contemporary pop songs as a commentary on proceedings. While there are worse auteurs to ape, you’ll likely be left with little more than a desire to go watch Goodfellas.

Dir: Andrea Berloff
Star: Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss, Domhnall Gleeson

Mind and Machine

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★½
“Circuit bored.”

Intelligence without morality to govern it, is psychopathy. So what happens when you create an intelligent machine, but deliberately avoid installing any kind of moral compass? It’s an interesting idea for a film. Not that you’d know it from this unconvincing effort, which sucks the potential out of it. In this near-future – it’s set in 2024, close enough to now, no actual work is required on the part of the makers – androids have become part of everyday society in many roles. Crime boss Isaac Lynch (Restegar) orders technician Leo Cameron (West) to make one without a conscience, so that it can be used as an assassin, saving those pesky hitman fees. Only Leo crafts the robot, Maya (Guerra), in the image of his late wife. On the plus side: he gets to see his wife again. On the other hand: she’s an amoral killer. Didn’t think that through too well, did he?

And that’s the problem here: not much of this makes sense. Not Leo’s actions. Not the way nobody else came up with the idea first; most obviously, the military would be all over this in reality. Not how Isaac’s entire criminal organization consists of about three people, yet is still capable of pushing technological innovation into uncharted territory (and he also kills a customer, rather than letting him pay their debt). Not even the way Maya – and this is so obvious, it’s not a spoiler – eventually rebels against Isaac’s orders. It seems like writer/director Humphrey decided where he wanted the film to end up, but couldn’t be bothered to figure out how it could logically reach that point.

I’ll give Guerra credit for her portrayal of Maya, which is credibly lacking in emotion. Though again. there’s no consistency there, nor any explanation for her decision to revolt, after being made to torture an undercover agent. Why is killing unproblematic for this machine, yet torture represents a breaking point? And the lead actress’s reluctance to disrobe does lead to one of the most embarrassingly unconvincing body doubles I’ve ever seen: Guerra’s hair is black and straight, while that of the woman standing in for her, is brown and wavy. If you can’t do it well, Humphrey should have written it out of his script, since it’s not as if it was necessary to the plot.

Maybe he needed it for running-time purposes. Because this barely qualifies as a feature, lasting a mere 70 minutes, and that includes a slow, slow end credit crawl. It certainly feels considerably longer, and my interest steadily waned, as it failed to provide any interesting answers, or ask any interesting questions. A slowly-developing self awareness and independence, and more focus on Maya, rather than (the thoroughly uninteresting) Leo and Isaac, might have been the way to go. But then, that was Ex Machina, wasn’t it? This is a poor imitation thereof, and one which sporadic bursts of low-rent violence can do nothing to rescue.

Dir: Brock Humphrey
Star: Ariana Guerra, Oryan West, Sal Rastegar, Bobby Hernandez

Sleeping Dogs Lie

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★★
“Dogged by issues.”

Account Armando (Cabellero) has made a series of questionable decisions, the two largest of which are: a) skimming from his organized crime connected client, Mr. Nakamura, and b) cheating on his wife Eleni (Giannatou) with his secretary, Luna (Zanella). These both come to a head when Eleni walks in on the pair of them, and the three of them take a long drive to a remote house in the desert, with Armando in the trunk of the car. There, Eleni prepares to extract the access information to the account where he has stashed the ill-gotten gains – an account Luna is rather unhappy to discover was created in her name. However, Armando knows this information is the only thing standing between him and a hole in the desert, so won’t give it up easily. And what, exactly, are Luna’s allegiances? Is she on his side or that or Eleni?

After a satisfactorily intriguing start, this falls apart after Armando breaks free of his bonds, and vanishes into the blackness surrounding the cabin. Far too much of the film thereafter consists of running around in the near darkness, and you’re left peering into the gloom, trying to figure out who is doing what, and to whom. [Low-budget film-makers need to realize that their product is far more likely to be seen on the small screen than a big one, and light/shoot on that basis] Though the problems start earlier, with a script that seems a draft or two short of polished. For instance, Eleni talks at length to Armando about how the foot is the most sensitive part of the body, then drives a nail right through… his hand?

It doesn’t help that the lead actress appears to be operating largely in her second language. What we get here is an object demonstration of the difference between speaking English, which she does perfectly well, and acting in English. It’s the latter which is an issue, and one made all the apparent by a scene or two where she gets to revert to her native Greek. The difference, in a positive direction, is palpable. Maybe it should just have been made entirely in Greek and Spanish?

But the weakness here is mostly the storyline, which relies too much on contrived incompetence necessary to the plot. By which I mean, if the trio had a lick of sense, events would have unfolded in three radically different directions. Eleni, in particular, stops being the intelligent and resourceful woman she initially appears, the one which I was looking forward to seeing, taking her revenge on an idiotic and unfaithful husband. Instead, by the time this ends, with one final twist beyond what is either necessary or plausible, you’ll be hard pushed to muster any reaction beyond a sigh, or possibly a small, marginally derisive snort.

Dir: Konstantinos Kovas
Star: Markella Giannatou, Miguel Angel Caballero, Joanna Zanella

Eye of the Colossus, by Nicole Grotepas

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Literary rating: ★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

This probably picked up half a star in the final couple of chapters, because up until the end, the plot seemed to have some huge deficiencies. While most of these were certainly addressed by the final resolution, it still left a rather questionable taste in my literary mouth [if you see what I mean!]. The heroine is Holly Drake, who has been unjustly sent to prison after killing her abusive husband. Unfortunately, he was a police officer, and some of his dubious colleagues helped ensure Holly went to jail for it. On release, her previous career as a teacher is no longer an option, and she’s largely thrown on to the charity of her sister, Meg, also a cop.

It’s Meg who gives Holly a lead to potential employment, albeit of a shady nature. But Holly has few options, and has to accept the job, which involves retrieving a necklace which has been stolen from its rightful owner, before it can be whisked away. To complete the task, she needs to put together a team with the various skills necessary, and also acquire a piece of tech called the Skelty Key, which is needed to defuse the security around their target. For someone with no background in the underworld, all of this poses a significant challenge, even discounting entirely the actual job itself. [Why she was hired at all is one of the eventually explained plot deficiencies]

This is nominally science-fiction, taking place in a six-moon system around Ixion, a gas giant. There are several different races, in addition to expat Earthlings like Holly, and the relationship between them is occasionally fractious. However, I never got any particular sense of “alienness”: you could rewrite this to be on Earth with almost no SF elements. There’s also not much in the way of an antagonist here. Early on, the “Shadow Coalition” appear to be trying to stop Holly from carrying out her mission; this aspect seems to peter out, as if the opposition got bored and drifted away. This combination perhaps turns it into more of a “crime procedural” than SF; that’s less criticism than an observation.

What is my main criticism is its sluggish pacing. You’re more than 90% of the way through before you get to the heist which is the book’s focus, and it’s a bit of a drag to reach that point. While self-contained enough overall, it’s clearly a set-up for future volumes, and I must confess, these are somewhat intriguing. There’s some stuff which happens to Holly late on, toughening up her character from the rather whiny one she has been to that point, and we also discover the harrowing circumstances leading to her incarceration. I just can’t help feeling we could have got to the same place considerably more economically, in about one-third of the page-count, and we would all have been considerably better off.

Author: Nicole Grotepas
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 3 in the Holly Drake Job series.