Tag Archives: Vicki Hendricks

X-rated reviews: Miami Purity, London Blues

Posted on October 7, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

Miami PurityX-rated reviews?

Now that that title hopefully got your attention, this week I’m reviewing two books, both of which are heavily focused on sex, Miami Purity by US writer Vicki Hendricks and Anthony Frewin’s London Blues.

Some Pulp Curry readers may not have heard of the Miami-based crime writer Vicki Hendricks. That’s a great pity because along with women like Megan Abbott, Christa Faust and others, she is dead set proof a women can knock out a noir tale every bit as feral and fucked up as their male counterparts. I should stress I personally don’t need any proof about this, but I suspect some others do.

Hendrick’s book, Cruel Poetry was reviewed on this site last year. Miami Purity was her debut novel and it’s good. You can tell just from the opening line: “Hank was drunk and he slugged me – it wasn’t the first time – and I picked up the radio and caught him across the forehead with it.”

The character who utters those words is Sheri Parley, a tough as nails stripper in her late thirties, with few life prospects who has come out of a string of terrible relationships, the last one of which led to the death of her last man (Hank) and a terrible alcohol fuelled binge.… Read more

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Posted in Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Noir fiction, Vicki Hendricks

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Noir Con or bust

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

As if I don’t have enough going on crime fiction-wise at the moment, with my debut novel Ghost Money and the upcoming launch of Crime Factory’s all Australian crime antho, Hard Labour, I’ll be attending Noir Con in the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia, in early November.

Noir Con is a biennial three day festival of noir crime writing and culture. Philadelphia is a fitting host city, being the birth place of the influential noir writer David Goodis, author of Dark Passage, Street of No Return and Shoot the Piano Player, amongst many other novels.

The best way to get a feel for Noir Con is to check out the program, which you can find here along with an interview with the mastermind behind the event, Lou Boxer.

Among the writers attending I’m keen to see are Megan Abbott, Vicki Hendricks, Lawrence Block and Wallace Stroby. I’m also looking forward to checking out the authors I haven’t heard of, as well as meeting some of the people I’ve been communicating with for a while now on social media.

In the lead up to Noir Con I’ll be spending a week and a half in New York, a city I have never been too but always wanted to see.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction, Megan Abbott, Noir Con, Noir fiction

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Book review: The Devil All the Time and other summer reading pleasures

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

No matter how stressful the Christmas/New Year period is (and mine has been pretty stressful for reasons I won’t go into here) there’s always the chance to read.

This year’s been no exception. I managed to knock off several books I’ve wanted to read for a while.

The first was Dead Women of Juarez by Sam Hawken. This was a great hardboiled read, especially for a first novel. I particular admire the author for having the guts to set the story amid the real life horror story in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, where since 1992 as many as 5,000 women have been murdered and no one has been brought to justice. I’ve done a longer review of Dead Women for Crime Fiction Lover and will post it to this site next week.

Another author I’ve been wanted to check out is Vicki Hendricks, who writes erotic noir fiction set in Miami. Her 2007 book, Cruel Poetry, took me back to the mid-nineties when Miami-based crime fiction was huge. The city’s crime rate was through the roof, Elmore Leonard was based there and writers like Carl Hiaason and Edna Buchanan were best sellers.

This book is very different to the other Miami crime novels I can remember reading, in a good way.… Read more

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Posted in Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Noir fiction, Vicki Hendricks

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