Queenpin by Megan Abbott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Reading like a solid example of period pulp, Megan Abbott's Queenpin is a pleasant take on the genre staples. So you've got crime bosses covered in silk and stones, down on their luck hard boys, and femme fatales with bodies like lava and curves that don't quit. And, of course, there are double crosses and clever tricks, and fate is tempted more than once by people too stupid or too tangled up to care. Abbott's contribution here is to focus on the women of noir. Instead of following some punk as he makes a name for himself, the narrator is a young women, getting into the criminal underworld through a job cooking the books at a club. This brief glimpse at a world with very different rules spikes her interest, and, of course, she wants more. When she's taken under the wing of crime boss Gloria Denton, she gets a very different kind of education, and an introduction to the crime world that still doesn't satisfy that hunger for more.
Slick writing by Abbot, who has a firm grasp of noir conventions and knows her way around a clever phrase.
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