Customer Reviews

Cruel Poetry

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Vicki Hendrick's latest, Cruel Poetry, is a surrealistic noirish journey through the seediest sections of Miami's South Beach and an exploration into the destructive nature that artists/writers face. Renata is the ultimate femme fatale--beautiful, oozing sexuality, and in her own way a force of nature every bit as dangerous as one of the hurricanes that blow through South Florida. Emotionally unavailable, she lives for kicks and sensual pleasure. Jules is a struggling novelist desperate to write a book and hoping to finally win her father's approval. Sexually repressed, she latches onto Renata for inspiration, living next to Renata in the same seedy South Beach Hotel so she can listen in through a hole in the wall to Renata's sexual escapades with both her boyfriend and customers. Renata knows about this and encourages it, glad in her own way to be able to help the creative process. Richard, a poet and professor at a local University, has become one of Renata's regulars. He has also latched onto Renata, desperate for the inspiration he believes her beauty and sensuality can give him to create again. Both Richard and Jules are caught in a downward spiral, both making one mistake after the next. Both are stifled creatively, both are seeking Renata as their muse and cure, and both are stripped bare at the end, literally and figuratively, by their compulsive need to create.

Hendricks pulls no punches--with the sex and the noirish descent these character fall into. Dreamlike, thematically rich, this is the real deal. Noir at it's best. So whether it's that you like your crime fiction populated by dark, twisted souls on a one-way ticket to hell, that you're looking for something out of the norm that's beautifully written, or you just want to read one of the best crime novels out this year, I highly recommend Cruel Poetry.

Renata is an empirical existentialist with a perfect ten body. She lives for pleasure full throttle and makes no excuses; she hooks for a living because it fits.

Richard is a poet, professor, husband and father obsessively in love with the above mentioned hooker. He's lost in his job, his marriage, his creativity and his quest for Renata's love. His attempts at coexistence with a normal life are spiraling out of control.

Julie is an aspiring writer paralyzed by insecurity and fear. Her need to prove herself with a tome worthy of daddy's praise places her in the path of a hurricane (both figuratively and literally). She's not quite sure if she's a lesbian or just another victim of love (love for Renata).

Francisco is also a hooker (the male version) and a small time drug dealer; a Florida version of a knockaround guy minus the traditional mob, although he does have business associates who make being around him dangerous. He's also Renata's lover of choice (as in she doesn't charge him), but is street savvy enough to understand the term "lover" as it applies to those who can't love; he's a convenience much the same way his job is a convenience to those requiring his services.

Pepe is a baby four foot python ... enough said.

Fans of Hendricks' special brand of noir erotica have been waiting five years for her latest sizzler and they'll be more than happy with Cruel Poetry. Spot on dialogue and an ability to absorb readers into her characters' dark worlds (worlds we can all relate to--whether they are dominated by obsession, jealousy, a failed marriage, a walk on the wild side, snakes or just an overwhelming need to feel complete) place Hendricks' noir at the forefront of the genre.

The poet's insatiable desire for Renata to love him has made a mess of his life. How his world comes apart piece by piece is fascinating and all too real. The good girl playing with dangerous people faces frightening consequences she can't imagine. Renata's emotional bond with Pepe (the cobra) reminds one of another of Hendrick's noir tales, Iguana Love. Renata can't feel love for people the way she can respect a snake (Pepe is genuine). Although she cares for people (Julie, Francisco and to some extent, even Richard), it will take a hurricane and a neatly wrapped surprise ending before she ever gets the chance to feel what everyone else around her seem so constrained by.

Vickie Hendricks remains the first Queen of Noir. Her much anticipated latest, Cruel Poetry, will draw you in with visceral, erotic and psychological obsessions. The ending will rock your world. Long live the Queen.

Elvis may have left the building, but "the Queen of Florida noir erotica," is standing solid at center stage. Like the King, her performance sizzles from start to finish. Cruel Poetry, the long-awaited fifth novel of Vicki Hendricks, is a hunk of burning love, lust, passion, obsession, sexuality (perverse and otherwise), betrayal, and murder that builds to such a fever pitch as it reaches its cataclysmic ending, that you can't turn the pages fast enough to see what happens next. At the centerpiece of a group of complex and compelling characters is Renata. Sexy yet deadly, Renata would like to think she believes in nothing. She is early described as having no feelings: "But she has none--no love, no pain . . . Life is safe when nothing matters." A prostitute who gives her body for money, and enjoys what she does, whether it is with a male or female, she still allows herself to be drawn into a kind of black hole from which none of the characters may escape. Francisco is described as "her lover and business partner," but even he wants more from her than the incredible sex they experience. Her next door neighbor, Jules, an aspiring writer who listens at the hole in the wall to Renata's sexual encounters, is drawn into Renata's life and may lose herself. The most haunted is Renata's obsessed poetry professor, Richard, who wants to take her away from all this and will risk everything and descend to any depth to have her. Throw in assorted private eyes, greasy lawyers, an angry wife, angrier drug dealers, hungry alligators, an impending hurricane, and a four foot Burmese python (just a baby) named Pepe that also loves Renata and mix them into the dark underbelly of Miami Beach that tourists seldom get to see or even imagine and you will be staring into a maelstrom for which the word noir doesn't seem dark nor hot enough. You will find yourself reading this book more than once.

I have read all of Vicki Hendrick's novels and this might be the best one. The story of Renata, Richard and Jules, with its strange mix of love, obsession, and indifference, is Vicki's darkest and most complex work to date. As usual, her style is smooth and flawless. Well worth reading.

...will be pretty much a function of how much you believe porn can replace an original plot in a noir novel. I gave up after a hundred pages or so (rare for me) because I want vividly drawn characters, not caricatures.

What I learned from this book is that there are a lot of 'live for the moment, beautiful people' in South Beach. Some of them are really exceptionally attractive, and they can get their way regardless of any other personal characteristics or deficiencies. And desire can drive otherwise sensible people to do dumb things with severe consequences.

In other words, there is nothing here that has not been done in scores of previous noir novels.

So, given that the cover is pretty reflective of what the book is, why did I pick it up? Because Michael Connelly, who has written only one weak book (Chasing the Dime) and a whole slew of fantastic ones praised Cruel Poetry to the hilt.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but I think he really missed it on this one.

In Miami Beach if you are male and can crawl let alone walk, you are attracted to the happy hooker Renata. Men cannot help themselves when it comes to this charming siren who has mesmerized even Pepe her snake and her pimp Francisco knows he should keep his hands off the merchandise, but cannot. Even women are intoxicated by this femme fatale. Client Professor Dick is beyond infatuation for her as he has a permanent wet spot whenever he comes to see Renata; make that even when he thinks of his Renata, which means he is diligently wet 24/7. Next door is Jules the writer who hears her sexcapades through the thin walls when she entertains clients, but is frustrated so he settles for fantasy time with her.

Rennie is not a nasty person though she can be tough. When Francisco wants more of her time with him, she calmly tells him they need her income to have any time together. When Richard vows to obtain a divorce and quit his job to be with her, she diligently tries to convince him his family needs him for then her. When Jules desires much more from her; she tries to persuade her they both need their friendship more than becoming lovers. However some men cannot be reasoned with using logic as they make decisions with their lower head in charge. Thus trying to make their fantasy come true, Richard and Jules will do anything including murdering her clients, family members, and perhaps the partner to get Rennie out of her occupation and permanently into their respective lives.

Though this character driven thriller rotates perspectives between Rennie, Dick, and Jules, the story line centers on the prostitute as much as of what the others do and think about her. The story line is fast-paced as sexual fantasy becomes homicide nightmares. Fans of Florida Noir will enjoy this sex and murder thriller in which blood flows more freely than scum.

Harriet Klausner

This intensely explicit story burns the way mesmerized moths burn. In obsessive sex matters, it seems to say, survival is a shaky goal. Survive what? The shocking messiness of intimacy. Hendrick's CRUEL POETRY crowds you; it does not give you room to catch your breath, or gain one car's length distance. Everything is on collision course here, though not always in a hurry: flesh moves over flesh in a Miami Beach flophouse, sickly evidence seeps into the reader, and the prose has an awkwardly numbing sense of rhythm. Noir does not comfort nor cover, and Hendricks applies this principle 100 percent, as things are 100 percent cotton. This is not about interchangeable porn with a yawn factor, but about eerie Erotic Noir: Hendricks does not need perverse undertones to introduce a true neo-vamp, an independent, modern seductress who insists on her freedom to keep everybody on arm's length - except her pet python.

Renata (Rennie) in this demanding central role is a perfectly crafted character - a young woman who goes too far in her emotions and reactions without even knowing it. Too physical, too urgently immediate, too carefree, too radiantly alive, too overpowering hot for the timid, restrained people who cannot help but become obsessed with her. Rennie quickly convinces you that she really believes her life would be hollow if she did not share her every iota of being with the world. She has a hot affair with life itself, and a natural appetite for sex that does neither hint Mae West, nor the overused, Lolita-esque child-women shtick. Rennie is simply a catalyst, a crazy hot number who makes people feel alive, a source both of delight and death.

Hendricks writes as sober and aching as any fallen angel, stuck between heaven and earth, would probably dream. With straightforward boldness and clear cut images she makes you crawl out of your igloo of self-control, and invites you to a lava skinny-dip in a very clever, almost leisurely way.

Rennie's next door neighbor in the shabby beachside hotel is Julie (Jules), an unhappy not-quite writer who peeps through a hole in the wall to live on borrowed erotic and energy. With loneliness closing in on her, she is a vulnerable drifter, buried in a luckless life, who seeks Rennie's nearness with an urgency like clinging vine. Along the way, another character who falls prey to Rennie's magnetism is Richard, a poetry professor who desperately tries to be more than just a casual sex opportunity to her. His obsession holds him like a nauseating shock, and kicks him out of lethargy. The only character who seems to be able to keep the right distance to Rennie is her semi-serious SO Francisco, who deliberately shrugs off her being irresistible.

There are glimmers of an unworldly terror and claustrophobic victimization in this book, and aloofness appears to be the magic word out. An abundance of hidden references and metaphors matches the plot and subplot maneuvers, and drags you deeper into thought. When nightlife and passion turn into crime, witnessed by voyeur Julie, the consequences teach the characters some of the uglier facts of
life. This book is a mental shake-up and a dark symphony you should not miss.





*

I really loved Vicki Hendrick's debut MIAMI PURITY. CRUEL POETRY is even steamier. CRUEL POETRY slides the razor edge of the taboo.
I write horror and Hendrick's work is a big influence on my books. I can't wait for next book.

In this, her latest novel, Hendricks, the undisputed queen of South Florida noir, plunges deeper into the pathological motivations of people who by some deep human flaw have shed most of their morals for survival.

Cruel Poetry drops some of the usual almost cartoonish noir devices Henricks fans have come to expect. Instead the reader is offered a more literary treat that puts her latest book on a par with more literary classics like "The Story of O" or the Marquis de Sade's writings.

For my taste, the first few sex scenes seemed a bit too obviously designed to pull in readers looking just for the steamy stuff, but it didn't take long for the plot to grab hold of me. Like Pepe, the slithering pet snake writhing along Renata's lovely limbs and trunk, it slowly gripped me. After that I couldn't put the book down.

Henricks manages in this novel to paint a truly vivid portrait of a woman living by impuse alone. Renata is a survivor pure and simple. Jules, the somewhat innocent neighbor who views Renata and her bizarre life of revolving sexual partners coupled with complicated loyalities through a peephole in the wall adjoining their rooms, struggles to retain her purity even as she is hypnotically drawn into Rennie and her boyfriend Francisco's steamy world of sex, alcohol and drug addcition, and murder.

The tension created by this is totally mesmerizing. Jules near fatal attraction to Renata is only matched by Richard, the unhappy English professor and failed poet who is willing to sacrifice anything to fufill his fantasy of redeeming the "whore" in Renata, and thereby perhaps redeeming himself.

One word of warning though. Don't read this book in public. You'd have to be dead not to be aroused by it.

I just finished Vicki Hendricks' newest book, CRUEL POETRY, and loved it.
Dennis Lehane calls her "the high priestess of neo-noir," as do many others,and this book doesn't disappoint.

CRUEL POETRY is a tale of obsession. Renata is a South Beach prostitute, and Richard is one of her regular clients, a poetry professor who wants to take her away from the seamy Tropical Moons hotel. Her next-door neighbor, Julie, likes to listen in on Renata's sessions through a hole in the wall, and gradually grows as fascinated by her as Richard is.

Lots of sex, murder and mayhem ensue, but the book's strength is the depth
of the psychological profiles of all three main characters. They transcend
type to become living, breathing people-- and of course, the hot, steamy
setting is equally strong. If you like noir, you won't want to miss this
book.

Neil Plakcy, author of Mahu Surfer: A Hawaiian Mystery (An Alyson Mystery)