PEEPSHOW by Leigh Redhead (Outfit 2009)

While I'm waiting for my copies of Benjamin Marra's Night Business (a comic about a stripper-killing slasher) to arrive, I thought a crime novel about a stripper-turned-P.I., written by an ex-stripper and published by an outfit called The Outfit, would be appropriate.

Interestingly, it's set in Melbourne, Australia, and Redhead brings the seedier side of that city to life with a local flavor that refreshingly twists familiar hardboiled trappings. She puts her firsthand acquaintance with the local sex-work scene to vivid, extensive, yet unobtrusive (i.e. no eye-glazing infodumps) use here. She mixes a few other aspects of her own biography into heroine Simone Kirsch, gaining a few extra points for authenticity while impressively avoiding the pitfalls of Mary Sue-ism.

As the novel opens, Kirsch has tried to take steps toward a career in law enforcement, but her past as a stripper has proven too great an obstacle, so instead she finished an "investigative services" course and received a certificate to work as a private investigator. Redhead does a nice job of depicting Kirsch with stripper street-smarts that frustratingly don't translate to gumshoe street-smarts. Kirsch isn't as badass as she hopes she is or needs to be, and we really get the sense of a neophyte trying to apply lessons she's not sure she remembers correctly. The capper comes when she goes back to consult with the instructor about the case she's working on, and he tells her, "Between you and me, the course is bullshit. I can't teach in a couple of months what it took twenty years to learn on the street."

Story-wise, this is Redhead's first novel, and there's room for improvement. When a mobster is murdered, his brother suspects Kirsch's stripper roommate. Kirsch talks the brother into giving her two weeks to find the real killer before he offs the roommate. He agrees because . . . that's the best plot device Redhead could come up with. There's an interesting twist or two at the end, almost ruined by a clunkily delivered Summation. In the meantime, though, it does flow pretty well. It's sexy and suspenseful, and there's some truly decent action.

I wouldn't recommend this quite as highly as James Reasoner does, but I enjoyed it well enough. The strengths certainly outweigh the weaknesses, and they're interesting enough to make this worth a look if it sounds at all appealing to you (you can actually sample it at Google books).