“I can always tell if a broad is lying to me. I spent a lot of years honing this bullshit detector.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (OCT 9, 2011)

In the 1960s, Mickey Spillane began to write The Consummata–a follow-up to The Delta Factor, the novel which introduced super-crook Morgan the Raider. After a series of disappointments with the Delta Factor film, Spillane stopped work on the unfinished The Consummata manuscript. Twenty years ago, he gave the manuscript to long-term friend, collaborator, and creative heir, Max Allan Collins. Since the death of Spillane in 2006, Collins has devoted himself to finishing the many Spillane projects left behind. So far fans have seen a number of publications, including Dead Street, The Goliath Bone, The Big Bang, and Kiss Her Goodbye. Now comes The Consummata–the long awaited sequel to The Delta Factor. The appearance of the sequel is reason enough to celebrate, but the novel’s publication also heralds the autumn return of Hard Case Crime following a short hiatus.

The Consummata finds Morgan the Raider on the run in Miami’s Little Havana and being chased by “federal suits” teamed with “local fuzz” who think he has 40 million dollars in stolen funds. With no place to hide, the chase seems to be coming to its inevitable conclusion, but suddenly Morgan finds himself snatched and hidden from the feds by some of Little Havana’s Cuban community. As Morgan hangs out with the Cubans waiting for the heat to cool down, he learns that the exiles managed to scrape together a fund of $75,000 to assist their relatives back in Cuba. Double agent Jaimie Halaquez wormed his way into the Little Havana exile community, and once he gained their trust, he lifted the dough. Morgan, grateful for the Cubans’ help, agrees to track down Halaquez and get the money back.

Easier said than done….

Halaquez, as it turns out, is “an S&M freak,” and this leads Morgan on the hunt for La Consummata, a legendary dominatrix who is rumored to be “setting up shop in Miami:”

“Sometimes she works alone, by appointment through intermediaries. Other times she has set up a location with other young women trained in the arts of sado-masochism. And, again, clients are by referral only. She has turned up in every major city in America and not a few in Europe. Her clients, they say, are among the most rich and powerful men in business and government. If she exists.”

“You don’t even know if she exists?”

“She is a rumor. A wisp of smoke. A legend. A dream. Lovely, a vision in black leather, they say….”

Of course, it’s inevitable that La Consummata and Morgan meet and tangle.

The Consummata is unabashedly pulp, so this is fast-paced action with not a lot of down-time. The story is set in the 60s, so expect the women to be sexy babes and the men (Morgan specifically) to be macho. This is a sequel novel, and for those who didn’t read The Delta Factor, The Consummata plays catch-up for approximately one chapter. Naturally, since the action hits the notorious bordellos of Miami and includes some of its working women, the book includes sex which is told from a male fantasy perspective. Overall, however, the emphasis is on action, reaction, and the recovery of stolen money.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Hard Case Crime (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Mickey Spillaine and Max Allan Collins
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Quarry’s Ex by Max Allan Collins Something’s Down There by Mickey Spillaine And by both authors together: Dead Street

Bibliography:

Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins:

• Dead Street (2007)
• The Goliath Bone (2008)
• The Big Bang ( 2010)
• Kiss Her Goodbye (May 2011)
• The Consummata (October 2011)

“Do the things you’ve done in your past add up to the person you are now? Or are you 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.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (OCT 9, 2011)

Hard Case Crime is back after a short hiatus, and for avid fans, the line-up is impressive: Quarry’s Ex by Max Allan Collins (delayed release from a year ago), Getting Off by Lawrence Block, The Consummata by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, and Choke Hold by Christa Faust.

Choke Hold is novelist and former peep show girl Faust’s second title for Hard Case Crime, and it’s a sequel to Money Shot. Faust is Hard Case Crime’s first female novelist, and if you think that means a tender, sensitive look at crime, then think again. Faust’s protagonist is tough former porn star, Angel Dare, a woman who feels more comfortable giving a blowjob than extending a sympathy hug. In Money Shot, Angel, owner of an adult modeling agency came out of retirement for one last gig. Big mistake. The job is a set-up by some particularly nasty gangsters who are hunting for a briefcase full of cash. Angel, who’s raped, beaten and stuffed in the trunk of a car, finds herself on the wrong side of a prostitution ring.

Choke Hold (and the title’s meaning becomes clear as the story plays out) finds Angel living under an assumed name as a waitress in Arizona. She was part of the Witness Protection program for 19 months and attending mandatory therapy with a shrink named Lindsay:

“She was always making these unequivocal statements about ‘women in my situation’ that had nothing to do with how I actually felt. She also insisted that I was in denial about my ‘abuse’ in the adult film industry. I could never talk to her about the things that were really on my mind. About the fact I didn’t feel like a poor violated victim at all. I felt like some kind of war veteran. Like I’d been forced to turn off something important inside me to become the killer I needed to be and I didn’t have any idea how to turn it back on again. To become an ordinary citizen again, if such a thing were possible. So instead I spent most of our time during the sessions with her by telling the raunchiest, kinkiest stories about my ‘abuse.’ I think she secretly got off on it. Poor Lindsay just needed a decent orgasm.”

Angel’s boring life under the Witness Protection program comes to an abrupt end when she realizes that her cover’s been blown. With her emergency ever-packed, go-bag, “two shitty fake IDs” and a few grand in cash, Angel ran. She’s in Arizona, waitressing, and providing after-hours entertainment for her boss trying to work off the expenses of a forged passport when her past catches up to her in an explosively violent way. Thick Vic, crankster and washed-up porn star, unexpectedly walks into Angel’s diner and death’s along for the ride. From this moment until the novel’s conclusion, it’s non-stop action with Angel on the run from pissed off Mexican gangsters involved in illegal boxing matches and cocaine smuggling. And she’s also on the run from her old nemesis, brutal Croatian gangster, Vukasin.

Choke Hold moves the action from Arizona to the illegal boxing matches held in Mexico, to a Las Vegas porn convention with live-streaming action. Throughout the chase, Angel picks up two protectors, Thick Vic’s cocky son, Cody and Hank “The Hammer”–a legendary boxer who’s sunk to teaching in a tacky local gym, fighting illegal matches, and practicing a little loan enforcement on the side. It’s through Angel’s relationship with Hank that this pulp novel shows its depth beyond the action. Angel never sees herself as a victim, but here’s she’s used and abused more than once in an industry in which no one rides for free. Hank’s industry takes a similar approach. He’s boxed his way into physical damage and suffers permanent migraines and short term memory loss. There’s a sad connection between Angel and Hank–a connection of two people who use their bodies to get by.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 23 readers
PUBLISHER:	Hard Case Crime (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Christa Faust
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Money Shot And: Quarry’s Ex by Max Allan Collins The Consummata by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

Bibliography:

• Control Freak (1998; 2002)
• Hoodtown (2004)

• Money Shot (2008)
• Choke Hold (2011)

With Poppy Z. Brite:

• Triads (2004)

“I let one of the men rename me. A man gave me the name Rose – you didn’t know that, did you, Poke?…He said, this man, he said that Kwan was too hard to remember, even though it’s a good name and it means ‘spirit,’ and that the rose was the queen of flowers and I was the queen of Patpong.” She laughs, rough as a cough. “The queen of Patpong. A kingdom of whores and viruses. Death with a smile.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett  (OCT 23, 2010)

The fourth in Hallinan’s involving Poke Rafferty Bangkok thriller series finds the American travel writer enjoying family life with new wife Rose and adopted daughter Miaow.

Miaow, a former street kid, now attends a multi-national private school where, determined to be like everybody else, she’s renamed herself Mia. Rose is Rose, tall, edgy, beautiful, happy in her newfound domesticity. Then a blast from her bargirl past turns up and in minutes there’s blood drawn and terror in their hearts.

James Horner, big, handsome and with private military skills, has a special grudge against Rose since she once tried to kill him. Rose isn’t saying much more than that, at least not until Rafferty has a couple more run-ins with Horner and his equally menacing sidekick. As a writer, Rafferty tends to meet brawn with brain, which is a lot of fun for the reader and still generates plenty of bloody action.

But with her family falling apart and another innocent girl hurt because she helped Rafferty, Rose decides to tell her story – which takes up the middle of the book.

Hallinan’s empathetic prose keeps this familiar story fresh – a bright, impoverished village girl, who runs away to escape being sold by her alcoholic father. We get a vivid picture of the gradations of bargirls – Kwan (Rose’s real name), more beautiful than most, has more choices. Hallinan takes us behind the scenes, giving us the girls’ point of view. Kwan’s story, full of pathos, friendship, and street-wise education, punctuated with occasional cruelty and common perils, builds to a crescendo of terror that makes it clear that Horner will stop at nothing to kill her. So Rafferty has to act, not just react.

With the help of his police friend and fellow Shakespeare aficionado, Arthit, Rafferty devises a plan. Trouble is Horner isn’t just big, he’s smart too, and much more ruthless than Rafferty. Hallinan meshes action, craftiness and the Bangkok streets to build to a white-knuckled and satisfying conclusion.

Hallinan knows his city, immersing us in Rafferty’s milieu of bar girls, school plays, cops and neighborliness. Miaow’s adolescent rebelliousness, her ardent and sometimes heartless desire to leave her streetwise past behind and be just like every other middleclass girl, and her endearing smarts all ring true.

Fans will be especially pleased to know more of Rose’s back-story, but first time readers will find themselves right at home in this exotic world.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 60 readers
PUBLISHER:	William Morrow (August 17, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Tim Hallinan
EXTRAS:	Queen of Patpong video on YouTube
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Nail Through the Heart The Fourth Estate Breathing Water A previous interview with Timothy Hallinan New series: Crashed

Bibliography:

Poke Rafferty, Bangkok series:

• Nail Through the Heart (2007)
• The Fourth Watcher (2008)
• Breathing Water (2009)
• The Queen of Patpong (2010)
• The Fear Artist (July 2012)

Junior Bender, Burglar series:

• Crashed (2010)
• Little Elvises (2011)
• The Fame Thief (July 2013)

Simeon Grist, Los Angeles series:

• The Four Last Things (1989)
• Everything But the Squeal (1990)
• Skin Deep (1991)
• Incinerator (1992)
• The Bone Polisher (1993)
• The Man with No Time (1994)

“The hardest part is trying to find a way of accepting that there is nothing you can do about any of it. Nothing you can do to change it, or to put the clock back, or put things right if they were wrong.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (SEP 3, 2010)

Susan Hill’s The Shadows in the Street is her fifth Simon Serrallier mystery. Hill continues to engage us with fresh characters and intriguing story lines. Simon does not even appear in the early chapters, since he is vacationing on a remote Scottish island, “where people did not hurry and there was little noise other than the sounds of nature.” Back in Lafferton, Simon’s twin sister, Dr. Cat Deerborn, is worried about her oldest child, Sam, who is upset but stubbornly uncommunicative, “an oyster, closed up tight.”

The most compelling aspect of this novel is its frank depiction of young women who walk the streets trying to earn quick money.  Some of them “were probably no more than twenty, thin, hollow-eyed, their legs without tights under the short strips of skirt.” One of them, Abi Righton, has a small son and daughter whom she adores. She never touches drugs and, against all odds, dreams of going to college and getting a proper job. When a killer begins stalking and strangling prostitutes, Detective Chief Superintendent Serrallier and his team work tirelessly to find a clever and elusive murderer.

Hill’s well-delineated characters include fifty-three year old Leslie Blade, a solitary and eccentric librarian who lives with his homebound mother; Jonty Lewis, a vicious bully and drug addict who enjoys abusing women; Ruth Webber, the bossy and obnoxious wife of the new Dean of St. Michael’s cathedral; Judith, Simon and Cat’s sympathetic and gentle stepmother; and Ben Vanek, an ambitious Detective Sergeant who worships Simon. When no quick solution to the murders is forthcoming, the media and Simon’s boss impatiently demand results. Soon, Serrallier’s pleasant holiday fades to a distant memory as he directs his team to study CCTV tapes, distribute leaflets, and interview potential witnesses.

The Shadows in the Street is a grim tale about the ways in which people deal with bereavement, abject loneliness, and chronic mental illness. The author depicts the terrible plight of desperate single mothers who sell the only commodity that they have—themselves– in order to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. This is an engrossing police procedural in which a frustrated Simon faces the possibility that he may fail to solve an important case, Cat struggles to emerge from her year of misery, and a shadowy individual with a hidden agenda wreaks havoc on a lovely cathedral town. For maximum enjoyment, this series should be read in order, starting with The Various Haunts of Men.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 9 readers
PUBLISHER:	Overlook Hardcover (September 2, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Susan Hill
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Risk of Darkness The Vows of Silence

Partial Bibliography:

• The Enclosure (1961)
• Do Me a Favor (1963)
• Gentlemen and Ladies (1968)
• A Change for the Better (1969)
• I’m the King of the Castle (1970)
• The Albatross : stories (1970)
• Strange Meeting (1971)
• The Bird of the Night (1972)
• A Bit of Singing and Dancing : stories (1973)
• In the Springtime of the Year (1973)
• The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story (1983)
• Air and Angels (1991)
• The Mist in the Mirror (1992)
• Mrs. de Winter (1993)
• The Service of Clouds (1997)
• Listening to the Orchestra (1997)
• The Boy who Taught the Beekeeper to Read (2003)
• Farthing House: An Other Stories (2006)
• The Man in the Picture: A Ghost Story (2007; September 2008 in US)
• The Beacon (October 2008; May 2009 in US)
• The Small Hand (2010)

Simon Serrailler Mystery Series:

• The Various Haunts of Men (2004; 2006 in US)
• The Pure in Heart (2005; 2007 in US)
• The Risk of Darkness (2006; March 2009 in US)
• The Vows of Silence (2008; October 2009 in US)
• The Shadows in the Street (2010; September 2010 in US)

Nonfiction:

• Howard’s End is on the Landing : A Year of Reading from Home (November 2010)

“I’d left a bed and a mother to sleep under storefront awnings right beside men who thought a homeless girl was a warm radiator they could put their hands to. I’d slept in shelters, in abandoned buildings. I’d been beaten. And at the start of every new day, I still believed I could choose my own beginning, one that was scrubbed clean of everything past.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (DEC 8, 2009)

Nami Mun’s Miles From Nowhere is a bold and gritty account of a young girl who leaves home at thirteen and experiences life on the streets, rape, addiction, and a series of horrific life events. She writes with no holds barred and her book reminded me in some ways of Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. It’s has that succinct, in-your-face style of writing that is both riveting and painful at the same time.

Joon is a Korean girl who leaves home at thirteen. Her father is a philandering drunk who is physically abusive and her mother has been unable to function since her father left. Her mother is virtually catatonic and does not interact with Joon at all. Sometimes Joon finds her mother lying in the dirt in their backyard. Her mother has stopped speaking to her. As Joon says, “One night I found her reading her bible on the sofa. I sat next to her and begged her to say one word, just one. I even gave her some suggestions: Apple. Lotion. Jesus. Rice. She didn’t look up from the pages. This lasted six months. This lasted until the day I left”.

The book is structured in chapters, each one capable of standing alone as a short story. In fact, several of the chapters have been published as short stories in different literary journals. The chapters show Joon’s life past and present, providing the reader with Joon’s story: her feelings, experiences, loves, friendships, disasters, pain, and ultimately, hopes for the future.

The novel begins with Joon in a shelter for run-aways. There she is befriended by a girl named Knowledge who is present in several of the book’s chapters. Knowledge is more worldly than Joon and tries to mentor Joon in the ways of the street. She actually gives Joon lessons in street morality asking her what she learned today. She proudly tells Joon, “Sometimes you gotta do wrong to do right, know what I’m saying?” There’s a complex rule of law for the street, very different from the rule of law that governs regular citizens.

During the course of this book, Joon struggles with heroin addiction, alcohol abuse, and uses most every drug she can get her hands on. She works as a hostess, a street vendor, a hooker, an Avon lady, a geriatric aide, and as a food deliverer. One can’t help but wonder if some of this book is not autobiographical. The author herself is Korean and the blurb about her states that she worked as an Avon lady, a street vendor and in a nursing home. She also attained a GED before college rather than going the usual route of high school.

Joon is a survivor. She struggles and finds herself challenged at many junctions but she plods on. She even finds it in herself to help others who are in worse shape than she is. However, the presentation of her ultimate aloneness in the world is profound. She has no one and is on her own as a child in the dangerous world of the Bronx. She often is homeless, sleeping in abandoned buildings or at bus stops. She is a pragmatist, knowing that life in the streets is not easy or good for her. “ In order to get what I needed – – shelter, food, money, friendship – – parts of me, piece by piece, would have to be sacrificed.” Joon learns to leave others before she is left, to move on without having to feel intimacy, even if she needs to squelch her feelings with a needle and smack.

This is a powerful book, not for the faint of heart. It is also a rewarding book, one that allows the reader to companion Joon in her life. It keeps our eyes open to another world, one that we may not have lived ourselves but one that is lived every day by so many of the children in the world. By the time I had finished this book, Joon had grabbed my heart and taken a piece of it with her.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 46 readers
PUBLISHER:	Riverhead Trade; Reprint edition (September 1, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AMAZON PAGE:	Miles from Nowhere
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Nami Mun
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More like this: The Blue Notebook by James A. Levine

Bibliography:

• Miles from Nowhere (Dec 2008)

“In Lithuania, trading in narcotics, say, is a serious crime. Heavy sentences are passed. Long, harsh punishments are meted out. But trading in people, in young women, that’s risk-free. In Lithuania pimps are hardly ever punished. No one is sentenced, no one gets a spell in prison.”

Book Review:

Review by Mary Whipple (OCT 16, 2009)

The grisly lives of innocent, sixteen- and seventeen-year-old Lithuanian girls, tricked into leaving their homeland on the promise of good jobs, unfold in tawdry detail as Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström focus on the sex trade in Sweden, its clientele, the financial syndicates which profit from it, the enforcers which protect it, and the police and others who allow it to flourish. Lydia Grajauskas, a “pro” with three years of experience by the age of twenty, like her friend Alena Sljusareva, serves twelve customers a day, earning almost no income except what she can negotiate with her customers for “extras.” Living in an apartment which a Russian with a diplomatic passport claims as “Lithuanian territory,” exempt from Swedish laws, Lydia can expect little help from the local police. Until she is beaten within an inch of her life.

Ewert Grens, a veteran police inspector in charge of the investigation, has several other issues to deal with at the same time. Twenty-five years ago, Jochum Lang, a sadistic drug dealer and Mafia hitman, dragged Ewert’s partner and lover Anni out of the back of the police van Ewert was driving, and she suffered catastrophic injuries. Lang is about to be released from prison, and Ewert still seeks vengeance upon him. The two plot lines converge when Lang appears at the hospital where Lydia is recuperating. Before long, the hospital is in lockdown.

Roslund and Hellström humanize this drama by alternating the focus between the two stories, giving background information about all the key characters. Ewert Grens, we learn, lives the life of a hermit, his only friend being fellow-officer Bengt Nordwall and his wife Lena, who invite him to meals and provide him with the only family life he has known for twenty-five years. Lydia’s friend Alena still pines for Janoz, her lover back home, and both girls are hoping to escape their bondage to Dmitri-Bastard-Pimp, their boss, and return to Lithuania. Hilding Oldeus, a drug addict who was protected by Jochum Lang when he was in jail, shares the torments of addiction and its effects on his family members, becoming a focus of the novel when Lang is released from jail. Sven Sundkvist, Ewert Grens’s current partner, afraid of the sight of blood and of bodies, is a thoughtful man who is as interested in knowing what motivates people to commit crimes as he is in stopping crime. A truly ethical man, he is the conscience of the novel.

Though the novel is exotic, in the sense that it describes the sadistic sexual practices of the prostitutes’ handlers and their customers, it is otherwise a traditional mystery/thriller. The focus is on the drama and the plot, with little attention to deep themes and no suggestion that the issues at the heart of the novel are being addressed by the government in any organized fashion. Though much sympathy is evoked for the sad victims of prostitution here, it seems that the best the police may be able to do is investigate and try individual crimes as they become known. The problems of witness intimidation, police corruption, and bending the truth to get a conviction, standard complications of many other police procedurals, also make their appearance here.

Though the novel takes place in Sweden, where the Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson also takes place (causing some people to compare these novels on this basis), this novel is a far more traditional mystery than the Larsson books, and it is sometimes marred by clichés, both in its plot and in its ponderous observations. Statements like “This must never happen again,” “When someone is kicked around for long enough, there comes a time [to] kick back,” and “Truth is the only thing people can bear to live with in the long run,” state the obvious and add nothing to the drama or to any thematic development. The novel offers some insights into the sleazy underworld of Stockholm, but it comes accompanied by sadism and fully described crimes against underage girls. The authors clearly empathize with these girls, however, creating a novel which has the feel of a shocking, journalistic expose.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 41 readers
PUBLISHER:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 13, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Mary Whipple
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More Scandanavian crime fiction… The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Girl Who Played with Fire by Steig Larsson Mind’s Eye by Håkan Nesser Nemesis by Jo Nesbø The Indian Bride by Karen Fossum Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg

Bibliography:

• The Beast (2004; 2005 in US)
• Box 21 (2005; October 2009 in US)
• Redemption (2006; not in US)
• The Girl Below the Street (2007; not in US)
• Three Seconds (May 2009; January 2011)
• Cell 8 (October 2011)

“This is the philosophy of the prostitute; I am who I am only at this moment in time; my past does not hang from my shoulders and my future is indefinable and so cannot be a concern. I am nothing else and there is nothing else. As I look at myself in the mirror, it dawns on me that the tree was correct – all is created for me alone. I close my eyes tight and hear the tree laughing.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Jana L. Perskie (JUL 7, 2009)

The Blue Notebook is a beautify written novel about the grimmest of subjects – child prostitution. Were it not for author James A. Levine’s exquisite prose and his remarkable protagonist, nine year-old Batuk Ramasdeen, a poem of a girl, this story might be too sad to read. However, Batuk, a precocious, ever optimistic little girl, wins the reader’s heart from page one and makes The Blue Notebook very hard to put down. At 210 pages, I read it in two sittings.

Batuk lives in a small village near Bhopal, India. During a bout of tuberculosis, at age seven, Batuk is interned in the missionary medical center, and it is here that she learns to read and write in Hindi. The nurses, observing her intelligence and acute curiosity, are happy to teach her, but not as thrilled as Batuk is to learn. She begins to write in a journal, the blue notebook, from that time forward.

When she recovers enough to return home, she is surprised to learn that she is going on a trip to Mumbai with her beloved father. She has never been on a bus before and is extremely excited. Batuk is not told that her family has fallen on hard times, and that she, at nine years-old, is going to be sold into prostitution. Batuk is an exceptionally lovely looking girl, so her father will receive a good deal of money for her – at least by his standards. On arrival in Mumbai, Master Ghil, takes charge of the child. Her father takes his money and leaves for home, without bidding his daughter farewell. Bewildered, Batuk allows herself to be bathed, perfumed and painted – with kohl darkening her eyes, and lipstick and rouge brightening her face and accentuating her features. I can only imagine that she looked like she was decked-out for Halloween. A doctor examines her, inside and out, to make sure she is a virgin and carries no disease – an altogether humiliating procedure. Batuk is then dressed in a beautiful sari and taken to a room filled with wealthy men. She is auctioned off to the highest bidder – beautiful virgins bring in much money.

Although seriously traumatized, stunned and disoriented, she survives her rough “initiation,” and is sent to a special “Orphanage,” where she is taught, with brutality, her new “trade.” This orphanage is policed by “Yazaks,” men and women who “have divested themselves of humanity.” Yazaks “view their charges solely in terms of the income they provide.” Punishment for disobeying their orders is savagely met out. It is at the Orphanage that Batuk meets her best friend, Puneet, an eight year old boy whose beauty is flawless. Boys are especially prized as prostitutes, and are trained to be girl-boys. Just before they reach adolescence, they are castrated so they are able to continue their profession as boys. Adolescent males do not make a good deal of money for their owners.

Eventually, Batuk and Puneet are given to Mamaki Briila, whom the children call “Hippopotamus” behind her back, because of her obesity. In Mamaki’s “house,” on the Common Street, each child is given a cell-like concrete room, called “nests.” There Batuk is expected to turn at least 10 tricks per day, a process she euphemistically calls “baking sweet cakes.” She is a survivor and is able to “will her soul away from her body” in order to maintain her sanity. “Her soul jumps onto the spinning upper air that covers the top of the earth and there is unconfined.” Sometimes, while her soul is out of her body, she believes that her nest is a “womb of gold,” where she is illuminated in white light. “From my face emanate rivers of brilliance that seek out all the specks of darkness, and that is how I light my nest. My nest is glowing in my light, for there is no other light.”

In her light, which glows so brilliantly, she makes up fantastic tales about a silver-eyed leopard and a poor boy who fells a giant with a single gold coin.

Her journal and daily writing allow her to create poems, document her life and her surroundings, and provide her with some happiness. Her pencil and journal are her most prized and only possessions. Fearful that Mamaki, or one of her “johns,” will discover the journal, she is careful to keep it hidden.

Although Batuk comes to realize that she is public property, she still remains a child in many ways. She loves to color with crayons, and to chatter away with Puneet and the other 4 girls who make-up Mamaki’s crew – but only when Mamaki is not around to listen, or the children will be punished for talking.

She strives to excel at “baking sweet cakes,” so she will receive praise from her oppressors, and maybe a bit more to eat. She is beaten often, for no reason except for the needs of some clients to dominate. All of her earnings go to pay off her purchase price; she gets nothing. Her experiences are devastating, but her spirit remains unconquered. Her acceptance of her world is nothing short of remarkable.

The storyline alternates in time from the period when Batuk is seven to nine years-old. She writes of the riverbank back in her village, “with Granpa, the feasts, the feuds with Mother, and the fights with my brother Avijit.” And she documents her life in Mumbai – from ages nine to fifteen. Batuk writes in the first person, about her experiences with clarity and detail. However, she rarely expresses her emotions.

At the age of fifteen, she is taken from Mamaki’s establishment and brought to a posh hotel in Mumbai. Here she is expected to serve as a party girl for a most demanding client. This event will change Batuk’s life forever.

Of course, I found The Blue Notebook difficult to read at times. However, James A. Levine’s prose is so, lyrical, and Batuk’s spirit is so alive – even in the most dire of circumstances she is determined to find some beauty – some happiness. Her imagination is her salvation.

I am looking forward to the author’s next book. It is obvious that he is an extraordinarily talented writer. James Levine is also a doctor and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, and is a world renowned scientist and researcher. He is donating all the U.S. royalties to the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 117 readers
PUBLISHER:	Spiegel & Grau (July 7, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Jana L. Perskie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	James Levine, M.D.
EXTRAS:	Excerpt and publisher word on this book
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	This movie comes to mind: Slumdog Millionaire And this book: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and this one, because it too has an unusual voice: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Bibliography:

• The Blue Notebook (2009)
• Bingo’s Run (January 2014)