by Christa Faust - 240 pages
Parts Unknown Publications

Let me rip my mask off. I dig pro wrestling. As a kid I remember squatting on the ringside benches of a Sudbury, Ontario arena watching Andre The Giant and Eduard Carpentier taking on Killer Kowalski and the Vachon brothers. When I heard about this book I had to have a copy. I e-mailed the publisher. He mailed me a copy. They stopped it at the border. Something about Christa Faust being dangerous goods. I e-mailed the publisher. He mailed another copy. I read it fast and thanked the gods of good writing for leading me into the wrong side of town to the burlesque girly bare knuckle extravaganza known as HOODTOWN.

All right. Enough about me. Let's put this microphone down and step out of the ring. It's time for the main card. In this corner, at five feet nothing and tactfully undisclosed poundage - I give you Christa Faust!

Proving that she's not just another "face" in the front row seats, Christa Faust takes the reader on a dark night journey through a noir/pulp-fiction/two-fists-and-a-drop-kick-straight-on-the-chin world of Hoodtown, an all masked society where babies are customarily hooded at birth, for life. Based on a very logical extension of the frenzied-fanboy-fanatacism that surrounds the world of Mexican wrestling - lucha libre.

Our protagonist, X, a former luchadora, (female wrestler), with a bum knee and a fistful of broken dreams. She's hands down, one of the toughest female protagonists I’ve ever had the privilege of running into. X is drawn into a hunt for a serial killer who is murdering and unmasking hooded prostitutes. That's about the worst insult you can hand down to an enmascarado, (masked wrestler). When a body turns up at X's favorite aunt's rooming house, X finds herself up against the ropes with no tag partner close at hand.

This might sound unbelievably corny, but Faust makes it work with a tight riveting sense of style and pace that will keep you pinned. Faust rings in a cast of characters ripped buck naked from a B-movie and demonstrates a love for violence that would make Mickey Spillane seek trauma counseling. I found myself rooting and cheering for X and the entire gamut of undercard side characters. Faust somehow infuses these larger than life characters with a sense of style and drama, "selling" her story on every page. I ate this book up like a bag of hot buttered popcorn, and awoke with a craving for a plateful of ranchos huevos, chorizo sausage and a tall bottle or two of Dos Equos.

HOODTOWN is Faust's second novel. She's just finished writing a pair of Nightmare on Elm Steet and Friday The 13th novels for Black Flame, and if these are half as exciting as HOODTOWN, you might want to place 911 on your speed-dial, because Faust's sense of high-test tension is definitely cardiac inducing. Faust describes herself as "a cynical hard-boiled bitch with a fetish for noir cinema, tattoos, and seamed stockings." I don't know about any of that, but she's hell-on-wheels for plot and pacing.

HOODTOWN is a fun, fast monkeyflip straight into a world of masks, mayhem and mystery. Fans of noir fiction, spandex and Mick Foley are going to want to grab this one up. We're talking cult fiction at its best, a classic jammed untidily into a ring rat's laundry sack - I recommend it from the top rope, straight on down to the canvas, now count me out please.

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