This review originally appeared on Goodreads on September 19, 2021.

So Nude, So Dead

By Evan Hunter – Hard Case Crime – July 14, 2015

Review by Robin Marx

An addict wakes up next to a beautiful lounge singer he’d met the night before, only to discover two bullet holes in her stomach and the 16 ounces of heroin she showed him missing. Chased by the police, Ray Stone must find the killer and attempt to clear his name while fighting off the effects of withdrawal.

This book is a fast-paced tour of the underbelly of the city, bouncing back and forth from seedy hotels, bars, disreputable clubs, and the apartments of various temptresses. The prose is fast and the action tense throughout, but it sags a bit in the middle when Stone makes second visits to people he already visited during the course of his ad hoc investigation.

Overall this is a solid crime story with a driving plot, but the characters felt pretty stock. A decent read, but perhaps not worth going to great lengths to seek out.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on October 11, 2021.

Peepland

By Christa Faust (Writer), Gary Phillips (Writer, Artist), Andrea Camerini (Artist) – Titan Comics – August 1, 2017

Review by Robin Marx

Set in the seedy pre-gentrification Times Square of 1986, Peepland tells the story of peep show booth girls, pornographers, punks, and other outcasts who become unwitting witnesses to a murder committed by a rich kid with a connected father.

I’ve read a half dozen entries in the Hard Case Crime line of graphic novels and this is the best one so far. The art is consistently high quality throughout, and Christa Faust’s neo-noir prose is always a treat. In an afterword, Faust mentions that the feel and some of the characters are based on her own experiences working peep show booths in 80s Time Square, and the story does benefit from authenticity and the humanity with which the misfit characters are treated.

★★★★☆

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