Book Around the Corner

Choke Hold by Christa Faust (2011) French title: L’ange gardien. Translated by Christophe Cuq

Do the things you’ve done in the past add up to the person you are now? Or are you endlessly reinvented by the choices you make for the future? I used to think I knew the answer to those questions. Now, I’m not so sure.

Angel Dare, former porn star is under witness protection. She’s a waitress at a diner in Arizona, hiding away from the men who want her dead. Her old life barrels into her new one when her ex-lover Vic Ventura comes to her diner with his son Cody. They don’t have to really catch up that Vic is shot dead right in front of her.

Angel doesn’t know if the killers are after Vic or her. No time to think, she just takes Cody under her wing and flees the scene as fast as she can.

Cody is 18 and recently reconnected with Vic. He is raised by his single mother who struggles with mental illness. His daily support system consists in Hank Hammer, former MMA champion and Cody’s MMA coach at a local gym.

Cody’s only goal is to become a MMA champion and he’s on the right track to achieve it. The kid is gifted and already participates to underground MMA fights in Mexico, all organized by the owner of the gym he trains at. That’s how Cody got involved in drug trafficking, thinking he was carrying steroids across the Mexican-American border.

Cody is young, idealistic and single-minded. He wants to be an MMA champion and go to Las Vegas to be casted in an MMA TV reality show. After Cody takes Angel to Hank’s trailer, the most sensible thing to do seems to leave Arizona and get Cody to Las Vegas on time for the show.

Our trio of misfits engages into a perilous road trip with a dangerous team of hitmen hot on their trail. Angel, Hank and Cody have all been thrown into the sea of life and have banged themselves on rocky shores. There’s a terrifying scene in My Absolute Darling where Turtle and Jacob are snatched by the rising tide of the Pacific Ocean and struggle for their life. That’s how I imagined Angel, Hank and Cody: taken away by events with no control over what happened to them and coming out of it bruised and battered.

Angel used to be a porn star, famous enough that people could recognize her on the street and that puts her in danger. She has to live with the memories of her former life and how it went to hell. Hank keeps Cody safe and straight and acts as his substitute father. He has a poor health, consequence of too many punches and concussions. Taking care of Cody gives him a purpose and it’s a win-win situation. Cody had a tough childhood with a mother unfit to raise him and forcing him to grow up and take responsibilities at a young age. Hank is his anchor.

And now, the three of them stick together for the better and the worse and despite Angel’s gut feeling that she’s better cut them loose.

Christa Faust’s style is punchy and catchy. (no pun intended) Choke Hold will appeal to readers who enjoyed Freedom’s Child by Jax Miller. Angel is the same kind of kickass heroin, full of sass, of resources and of courage. Faust spent a decade working in peep-shows and for the porn industry. She knows her stuff and her Angel sounds real. Choke Hold is the sequel to Money Shot and while I still enjoyed Choke Hold, I think it’s better to read them in the right order.

Recommended to crime fiction lovers and readers of Virginie Despentes. (In France, published by Gallmeister)