Real Easy

Starred review from November 29, 2021
YA and children’s author Rutkoski (The Kronos Chronicles) makes her adult debut with a haunting crime novel. Victor Amador, a police detective in an unnamed state, is hoping for a quiet overtime shift when he gets a call to investigate a report of an abandoned car in a ditch. When he responds, he finds blood and, eventually, the corpse of a woman who worked at a nearby strip club. The exact cause of death isn’t immediately clear, but the coroner finds date-rape drugs in the woman’s system, and the figure of a crown was carved into the sole of one foot. Amador investigates, with the help of colleague Holly Meylin, who is still traumatized by her infant’s accidental death due to her ex-husband’s negligence. Rutkoski uses the familiar plot of a police search for a killer targeting women to paint moving portraits of desperate lives on both sides of the law. She’s especially good at making the strippers more than clichés. Fans of psychologically rich thrillers will hope for more from Rutkoski. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, ICM Partners.

Starred review from January 1, 2022
Samantha Lind, known to the patrons of the Lovely Lady as Ruby, disappears while ferrying home another dancer, Jade, who was found blitzed on GHB in the middle of her shift. Hours later, police find Samantha's empty car abandoned with its seat belts slashed and Jade's strangled body dumped nearby. Samantha appears to have been snatched by a killer whose carnage yields few clues. The case lands with detectives in the small town of Fremont, Illinois, Victor Amador and Holly Meylin, who must draw information from the Lovely Lady's secretive employees, as well as from Samantha's guilt-ridden boyfriend and a seemingly infinite number of suspicious patrons. When the killer's carving of a crude crown into Jade's heel is linked to the nearby murders of several other exotic dancers, Meylin is certain they'll find the killer at the Lovely Lady, and she recruits a dancer, Gigi, to work as her confidential informant. Gigi, a sharp-witted survivor, quickly unravels the club's secrets but not before she becomes the killer's next target. Veteran children's author Rutkoski's writing is a pleasure here; she weaves well-calibrated suspense with gritty portrayals of dancers and detectives that hold strikingly parallel themes of loneliness, painful pasts, and heavy doses of distrust.

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Starred review from December 15, 2021
It's 1999, and the case of one woman murdered and another kidnapped takes on nuance as the story is conveyed from the points of view of at least a dozen different voices. Samantha's time is split between two worlds: There's her longtime job as a stripper at the Lovely Lady and her domestic life with boyfriend Nick and his daughter, Rosie, whom she longs to mother. Despite Nick's objections, she finds something meaningful in her relationships with her fellow dancers and in the care of Dale, the Lovely Lady's owner. She even becomes a mentor of sorts to Jolene, the newest dancer at the club, offering to drive the girl home one night when she turns up high. They never make it to their destination. Detective Victor Amador responds to the call of a car in a ditch and finds Jolene's body; the girl has been strangled. Samantha is missing, apparently kidnapped. The rest of the novel follows this unfolding mystery, with every chapter told from a different character's point of view. Some characters, like dancers Samantha and Georgia as well as Victor and detective Holly Meylin, get multiple chapters, while others, like Nick and Rosie and the bouncer, Jimmy, get only one each, but the multiplicity of perspectives provides layers of narrative detail that lend complexity to this thriller. Rutkoski's writing is lyrical, offering quiet metaphors and imagery despite some pointedly crude language, primarily directed at the dancers by men at the club. The language disparity and the multiple perspectives serve to emphasize a larger point: that even in ugliness, loss, and tragedy, there is humanity. Though the killer is unmasked, the takeaway is much more universal--and satisfying--than just finding out whodunit: This is a story about flawed people just doing the best they can to live their lives and find love. Vulnerable yet steely, this thriller rises above the rest.

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