Blurb
Hard
Luck Girl is a mystery about prostitution in a location better known
for gardens than gangsters — Victoria, British Columbia.
Rose's
life has never been easy. When she finds her pimp murdered it gets a
whole lot harder. At first, she sees it as an opportunity but
discovers the status quo has been disrupted and she's not at the top
of the food chain, not even close.
Avoiding
psychopaths, police, and friends like thieves, there is no one she
can turn to for help not once she discovers a pimp's life is cheap, a
prostitute's even cheaper.
Stuck
between the desire for a better life and holding on to hers, is a
needle she's not sure she can thread. But maybe Hard Luck is better
than no luck at all?
"A
gritty novel with a surprising and strong female lead. Johnston
offers all the expected hard-boiled elements in this
mystery—including shady characters, near misses with the police,
rampant sex, drug use, and violence.”-
Kirkus Review
Excerpt
On
my knees, I pulled Rod’s stash out from the air conditioner. I took
a hefty-sized rock, held it in my hand, and weighed both it and the
circumstances. She came for crystal meth, but she’d take whatever I
gave her. I dug back in the air conditioner and pulled out the
suspect bag when her words stuck me. “He’s got that good ice.”
How did she know that? It was a chance to conduct an experiment and
find out what she knew. If someone came back for the drugs and saw
that the bag was short, I’d pay for it or replace it. No harm, no
foul. But if it was laced with fentanyl and had in fact killed Rod,
Suzy would be dead in minutes. It might make me complicit in murder,
but she’d end up there at some point anyway, like a package in the
mail. I’d just upgraded the shipping. If it didn’t kill her,
she’d be grateful to me for giving it to her. If caught with it,
she could point her finger at me and remain innocent. We were a
begrudged sisterhood of sorts, we all hated the clients, society and
life—we didn’t care for each other all that much either.
She
looked like a dog waiting for a treat when I opened the door. She
stepped toward me, hands out and palms open. She examined it before
I’d even placed the poison apple in her hand, as if it were a cruel
joke. She waited for me to name my price, and I let her sweat like I
was about to but didn’t. I placed it in her hand, and to let her
off my invisible leash said, “Don’t worry. I know you’re good
for it.” She wet her cracked lips, possibly thinking about the
repercussions, but her immediate appetite trumped an unknown future.
She wasn’t good for it, and luckily, she didn’t have to be. I’d
used her cravings against her and gained at least a favor.
Review
by Lisabet Sarai
It’s
just another job. That’s part of the message in Topshee Johnston’s
fascinating thriller Hard Luck Girl. Prostitutes prefer to
call their work “the sex trade”. This non-judgmental description
is not a just euphemism, it’s an accurate description. Prostitution
is a commercial transaction like any other: the sex worker trades
sexual acts for money. How is this different from taking money for
fixing somebody’s car, or cleaning their house, or mowing their
lawn? The difference lies the eye of the beholder – in society’s
notions that sex is somehow evil or immoral, especially when the
participants are not committed to one another.
It’s
just another job, but it’s not any easy one. Rose, the intriguing
heroine in Hard Luck Girl, makes
that clear. Prostitution shares a lot with theater. The best
practitioners offer their clients illusions as well as physical
release. Doing well requires
not just an attractive body and well-developed erotic skills but also
the ability to adapt to the moods of the john and to make him feel
special – even though
deep down he
knows he wouldn’t be getting anything at
all if he didn’t have the
cash.
Some
women are forced into the sex trade. Rose chose her career with her
eyes open, under the influence of her role model Sara, and she’s
not sorry. She’s smart,
responsible, classy. She
makes a good living. She’s worked her way up to being Rodney the
pimp’s top girl, which means she has some authority with the other
women in his stable. They
look up to her as a
role model, strange as that might seem.
So
when Rodney is
murdered, she has the crazy notion that maybe she can hide that fact,
at least for a while. Rodney would want the girls to keep producing.
She thinks she can
make that happen, while she tries to figure out why he was killed,
and by whom. She’s only
half right, for the odds are stacked against her.
I
really enjoyed reading Hard Luck Girl.
The first person narrative pulls you into Rose’s head and lets you
experience her cold-blooded
calculations as well as her
roller coaster moods. There are some intensely
dramatic scenes, including the final confrontation with the villains.
There are also vignettes
that illustrate how much of the world views the sex trade. For
instance, when Rose walks into a hardware store to acquire supplies
she needs to dispose of Rodney’s body, the proprietor treats her
like dirt – until he realizes she’s about to drop six hundred
dollars for her purchases.
The
plot felt a bit shaky to me. In particular, I found it implausible
that Rose could leave a dead body in a truck in a parking lot for
multiple days without anyone detecting it. The real bad guys turn out
to be invisible and I wasn’t completely convinced that the
proximate villains, who were more greedy than evil, would have chosen
to do business with them.
However,
despite this being a mystery, the focus is more on characters than
plot. Rose is a compelling heroine, complicated and contradictory.
She’s clearly very intelligent, but she sometimes acts on impulse
and makes stupid decisions. Rodney is dead when the story opens, but
we still get a glimpse of his personality, including his affinity for
order and his devotion to his mother. Suzy the addict is convincingly
scattered, scheming and desperate. Gorgeous, hard-boiled Sara appears
only fleetingly, but leaves you with chills running down your spine. Even the local homeless guy has a distinctive voice and presence.
When
I agreed to review Hard Luck Girl, I thought the author was a
woman. Only when I set up this blog post did I realize that Topshee
Johnston is male. I’m truly impressed by his ability to create such
a complex and believable female heroine – and by his courage and
creativity in making her a sex worker.
About
the Author
Topshee
Johnston, author of Hard Luck Girl, writes because it's the
only way to get his characters to stop talking to him. He lets them
tell their story and trusts their voice. Once a story is finished, he
moves on to the next in line.
He
lives in Victoria, B.C with his wife and daughter and when he's not
writing, he's skateboarding, playing guitar, or fly-fishing.
Connect
with Canadian author Topshee Johnston on Goodreads, Facebook,
Instagram, or on his website.
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/topsheejohnston/
Website:
http://topsheejohnston.com/
Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/TopsheeJ
Check
out the book on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, and
Indigo/Chapters!
Topshee
Johnston is giving away a $20 Amazon/BN gift card to one lucky reader
during the tour.
14 comments:
Thanks for hosting!
Fascinating book, Topshee. I really enjoyed reading it.
Thanks for sharing your book. Wishing you a successful release.
Great excerpt and review!
Sounds like a good read.
I love the excerpt.
I humbly offer you my blog with 100% real stories with my submissive girlfriend
Thanks for hosting Lisabet. I really appreciate your thoughtful and honest review as well.
This is a compelling review of what sounds like a really interesting book. Thank you for sharing such a thorough and substantive review, Lisabet!
The cover is very eye catching! It sets the tone for the book.
Wow! Sounds like a totally different kind of book. I'll bet the sex, if any, in the book isn't erotic either. After all, it's just a job. I've read that johns don't pay their hookers for the sex, as much as for their leaving afterwards, so the men don't have to make any small-talk, or pretend that it meant any more than a transaction. That makes me wonder how many men really feel that way, even about their wives?
Do you have any plans to read or write over the holiday weekend?
What was the hardest part of the story to crack?
Bernie, I try to write everyday, so the answer to your question is yes. The hardest part of the story to crack was motive. It's difficult to "think like a bad guy."
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