Customer Reviews

Hoodtown

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I came across this book, I picked it up, thinking it was a cute idea: a masked detective named X, who lives in a city of people whose identity lies in the masks they wear. I was pleasantly surprised to find out my "cute idea" thought was one of the biggest understatements my mind ever told me.

This is not just a great book focusing on pro wrestling (more specifically, Lucha Libre, the Mexican Style of Pro Wrestling), this is not just a great crime novel, this is not just just a great fantasy tale; this is a great novel that encompasses all these genres!

Christ Faust tells the story of Ms. X, a former luchadora (lady wrestler) who fell from grace in the professional Lucha Libre world, and now resides in Hoodtown, her old stomping grounds. Here she makes a modest living, still as a luchadora, but as a private luchadora, who dishes out hourly sessions to masochistic men who are thrilled to be smacked around by Ms. X.

Her new routine is interrupted when masked prostitutes in Hoodtown are found not only murdered, but left unmasked, which is every bit as horrible in itself as death. Ms. X becomes a self taught private eye searching for the killer since the police ---who do not reside in Hoodtown, and like most maskless people in this novel's society, spit upon masked folks as members of the lowest caste--- are nonchalant about finding the murderer.

Of all the great things I can say about this story, what floored me most is Christa Faust's ability to create a gritty but sexy heroine in Ms. X, and in quite a way that I've never seen before. X is no glamour girl, but a rubenesque middle-aged woman with aches & battle scars from her former professional life. Rather than turning her into a one-dimensional asexual gritty character, Faust's erotic segments brings out X's raw sexuality in a way the reader will find alluring. It seems like so much erotica is based on glamorous folk with lilywhite skin and flawless bods; Faust does an enviable job of taking a down-to-earth character with flaws, but still painting a sensual figure that will make any man wish that X was a real life woman they could meet in the flesh. For fans of Japanese Womens' wrestling, picture Bull Nakano as a detective!{Sigh!}

This is also the best novel I have ever read that is based on professional wrestling. I have read one or two decent wrestling novels, a few mind-numbingly horrid wrestling novels, but this is the first great pro wrestling novel I have encountered.

So, mystery fiction getting you down?
Alternate worlds seem like the same old thing?

I suggest you take the first exit to _Hoodtown_, and like the masked comabtants in the novel, it will rock your world. Faust's innovative, taut, suspensful and sexy novel is like nothing you have read before.
Like Hoodtown itself, it's a rich blend of cultural references from hardboiled noir fiction to the dazzling world of Mexican wrestling. (There's also a pinch or two of hot sex with searingly raw emotion--it brings out the flavor.) . Like the Mexican/Japanese dishes savored by the characters, this mix is exotic and delicious.
Faust's heroine X is truly a divine creation--an older woman with A Past who has seen better days, an ex-villan with a violent streak,a tender heart and a bum knee. The plot she unravels combines terror, excitement and human drama in an imagined world that simply hums and crackles with life. I didn't want this novel to end, even when I knew that as in all crime stories, the showdown was inevitable.
Here's hoping that this isn't Faust's only visit to Hoodtown; I certainly want to know what other stories are on these streets.

One evening, I took a nice hot bath and cracked open "Hoodtown" with the intent of reading the first two or three chapters. Next thing I know it's two hours later, I've finished the book and my bath is now ice cold. I woke up the next morning very, very sick. For this, I blame Christa Faust. Her book is impossible to put down. There's not enough space to go into plot details (see book description above), but let me tell you that Ms.Faust has created a completely engrossing world of masked heroes, serial killers, midget pimps, savage violence, and rough sex. Once you've finished the book, you'll want to visit Hoodtown to buy some churros, a souvenir mask or some hot masked lovin'. ;)

This book is one of the most fun and original books I've ever read, hands down.

Faust has done a little alternate reality world building with this novel that is so perfect that it seems this town should exist. Essentially "Hoodtown" is a border slum section of Angel City that is its own little island of a very specific culture. All the people who are native to the area wear luchador masks from birth; they are never seen without them. There are special "barbers" they go to to have their skin treated, and even then their faces are never exposed. Wrestlers are their superstars. Their religious icons are El Santo and The Hooded Virgin, Our Lady of Secrets.

Locals, called "Hoods," don't think much of people from outside the neighborhood. Those folks they call "Skins," and Skins don't think much of Hoodtown either:

"Skins call it a slum and menace. They love to get on the radio and whine about what a sewer it is, but they can't seem to stop their hapless offspring from showing up every weekend to **** our hookers and drink our tequila. All their freaks and rejects, criminals and runaways and anyone who needs to disappear, they all wind up in Hoodtown."

Our narrator, X, is a former wrestler. She makes money where she can; for example, in a club much like a peepshow or sex club, she fake wrestles "johns" for cash; they get off reenacting her bouts, and she mechanically goes through the motions not unlike a stripper grinding away on lonely men in the dark corners of a strip club. Her life changes when a young woman is discovered murdered. Worse, the victim is also unmasked, a violation that is the worst thing that can happen to a Hood. The killer seems to have taken the mask with him, as if he is collecting it as a trophy. And he doesn't stop with just one girl.

X becomes involved in an effort to find the killer. Before the novel reaches its climax, she comes face-to-face with brutal suspects who would rather fight than talk, and an old lover who happens to be the most famous luchador of them all. She is forced to deal with Skin policemen who don't seem to care much for what is happening in the neighborhood, and must negotiate with a midget crime boss named El Jefe. There are many fights, lots of blood and tears and fire before the truth is revealed, and X does not emerge unscathed, physically or mentally.

It is a tight, well-written thriller that would be made into a movie if there were any justice in the world at all. X is one of the best protagonists I've read in any genre; her voice and personality, and the lines that roll off her tongue, stayed with me long after I finished the book, and nothing would make me happier than to see her revisited in fiction.

Faust has done a phenomenal job creating this utterly believable setting. I have spent many days in Tucson, Arizona, and Hoodtown felt like it belonged somewhere in that dusty city, even if Angel City is more a facsimile of Los Angeles. Hoodtown is a story that can be read for its face value alone and be appreciated, but one can't help but feel there is a certain amount of social commentary going on beneath the surface of Faust's storytelling. I don't think she is an author going out of her way to politicize anything she writes, but there is a familiarity with specific cultures and how they clash that this book casts a light on, and it can't be purely coincidental. The beauty of it is that Christa does it so well, and with such a light touch, that it doesn't overshadow the brilliance of an excellent noir tale told by one of the best.

I'm a huge fan of Christa Faust, and a huge fan of this book. I think everyone who loves books full of bloody knuckles and f-words should read it. Not to mention fans of woman wrestlers with gloriously enormous backsides.

I loved this book - every dark, well-turned, beautifully plotted word. Although its byline is "a Lucha-Noir Novel" you don't have to be a fan of Latin American pro wrestling to enjoy this pulp wonder. Hoodtown is a ghetto where "Hoods" (a society where everyone from birth to death wear the lucha libre hoods as their identity) try to live their everyday lives among gangsters, drugs, and crime, just minutes from Angel City where "Skins" live a life of order and plenty. The heart of this book is "X" a retired, 40ish, luchadora (lady wrestler) who is thrown into the investigation of the murders of Hoodtown prostitutes. The women are not only brutalized but their mascaras (masks) are stolen, a crime as heinous as the murders themselves. Although this novel is allegorical, the character of X is beautifully realistic from her frustration that her life isn't how she planned it, to her inability to commit to the passionate trumpet player who adores her. This book is dark, sensuous, and wicked at every turn, and I take my hood off to the very talented Christa Faust who is in a league all her own.

Set in an alternate reality that mixes elements of Lucha Libre, film noir, pornography, and Ralf Ellison's Invisible Man, Hoodtown chronicles the misadventures of X, a fallen middle-aged ruda eking out a living as a speciality dominatrix and leg breaker in the luchadore ghetto of Hoodtown. X has a checkered past, a bad knee, and a serial killer to bring to justice - assuming he doesn't get her first! Written by the talented and versatile Christina Faust, this book contains a dozen quality illustrations by kindred soul Rafael Navarro, author of the excellent Sonambulo graphic novels. The two of them are part of a "luchacentric" circle of writers, artists, and performers headed by publisher and promoter Keith J. Rainville.

Essentially the only Sexo y Violencia novel ever written, Hoodtown is a cult genre novel that only about 300 people in the world could ever possibly appreciate. Fortunately, I am one of those 300 people and I dearly love this novel. Faust does an excellent job of creating a believable masked subculture that comes complete with its own language, religion, social mores, and problems. It resembles pre-integration era Southern black culture just enough to be convincing without crossing over the line into exploitation. She also utilizes an old but good storytelling trope that I am particularly fond of: the protagonist is a villain forced into the role of hero against her will. X would much rather be getting laid, drunk, or cracking skulls than solving a mystery; but forces both internally and externally beyond her control force her to do the right thing.

A sexy, sweating, blood soaked lucha tour de force.

My review's from my thoughts on Spookycon in my LJ:
Wow. Set in a Noir city where there's a culture based on the Luchador wrestling phenomenon. Someone's killing girls in Hoodtown and stealing their mascaras, their ornate face masks the separate them from the Skins. It's up to X, a former luchadora fallen on hard times to avenge the girls deaths and stop the killer. Were this a normal weekend, it would have been a "can't put down." As it was, it turned into a "pick it up again as soon as possible."-
I read it there in less than a day, but I've since gone back and re read it at a more leisurely pace. Still damn good.

This book is unlike any I have read before. It is so imaginative and absorbing. I really felt I was participating in every scene! Highly recommended!

WOW,WOW,WOW. I was not prepared for the intensity and realism of Hoodtown. So absorbing, it had me hooked. I am fascinated by the imagination of a first class writer. Good luck Christa Faust, I will pass along this book, but I will not give it away, I look forward to reading any others you have written. WOW WOW WOW.

In her novella `Hoodtown', Christa Faust has attempted something extra-ordinary.
She's created a world and a micro-culture that are similar enough to our everyday lives to be recognisable, yet different enough to keep a reader on their toes.

Hoodtown is the broken down sleazy ghetto where the hoods hang out.

The hoods are a group of people brought together by religion, slang, wrestling and culture in a way that means they have to keep their faces covered at all times. They have hoods for babies, for sleeping and for wrestling in. There are special arrangements for shaving and facials. Their whole way of life is impeded upon by these hoods, not least in the way they are looked down upon by the majority `Skins' who wear no hoods and pull the strings in society.

The story is told by X. She's an ex all-right - an ex-wrestler, ex-beauty and the ex of one Jaguar de Juarez who is a wrestling legend.

When we meet her she's well past her heyday in wrestling terms, drummed out of the federation after `the incident' with Blue Velvet.

She's a tough lady and a hell of a character. She also exposes herself in ways that many first-person narrators don't achieve.

Unfortunately for X, she happens upon the body of a murdered hood. It's something that haunts her given the nature of the killing; the victim's hood has been removed and an act of sacrilege has been committed.

The murder turns out to be one of a series and X is driven to find out what's going on.

The plot broadens as the involvement of big fish from Skin and Hood ponds react to her enquiries and the only allies she has are the men in her life and a sympathetic Skin cop (who is the exception rather than the rule).
Her life moves at a pace, shifting from one lead to another until the satisfying and totally unexpected identification of the killer.

Overall, the work is written really well. Faust has turns of phrase that show a great creativity in her use of language and an unusual perspective on everyday happenings. There are regular nuggets of delight to be savoured.

The hard-boiled package works really well and she carries off the creation of the Hood culture with apparent ease.

A couple of things slowed things down for me, however, making this a four star review than a five. I'd also like to point out that these points probably say more about me as a reader than about the author.
I was fascinated by the Hood concept. Tried to work out what a face would look like after so many years under-cover, or thinking about how the baby hoods worked and sleeping and love-making etc and I found myself drifting away from the plot. I was also bogged down with attempting to fathom the whole concept (yep, probably trying to see things that weren't even there). It doesn't seem to make any fresh statements about prejudice, but it's a constant reminder of the need to respect-people for who they are. It had me thinking of Burkas and the issues for wearers and non-wearers within western communities. Ghettos and exclusion and riots and poverty were frequently in my thoughts. I guess from that point of view it should be seen as a thought-provoking book that should be read, but I'm not sure.

The other issue for me was my capacity to hold the threads together. Each scene leads to the next with a fairly high speed of turnover and big changes coming fairly quickly. Throw in the unusual names and the number of characters and I found myself having to work pretty hard to stay with the programme - like I said, this is likely my issue as working-memory isn't one of my strengths.

These points were minor in the scheme of things. Amidst the colourful language, the raw setting and within the violent scenes of a crazy, Hood wrestler on the rampage they pale into the background.

Very entertaining overall. A perfect book for groups and group discussions. I'd quite like to do some discussing myself, see the parts I missed and find out what others took from the setup so I can read it again from a new perspective.

Please go and try it - I'd love to see your reviews and interpretations.