The Breathtaking Christa P: A Novel of Crime

by P. Curran

Everyone you meet here is exactly who they pretend they are.... Welcome to New Orleans in 1995, a great town for an escaped lunatic with a knack for saying whatever you need to hear. No one spots the holes in his alibi as he creeps through the clip joints and posh restaurants, meeting addicts and crooked cops, grifters and bitter drunks. None of them suspects what kind of danger they're in until it is too late. Just by chance, the only one back home who knows where to find him-the one person who can have him locked up with a single phone call-needs him to spy on a gold-digging French Quarter stripper. That's not a job he can refuse. This second book in the author's accidental 1990's trilogy doesn't involve any characters from Stay Out Of New Orleans (The NOLA centric underground cult classic), which is lucky for them. It's the same city, sweet, deadly, and irresistable. A nightmare you don't want to end. Previously self-published as was the Stay Out of New Orleans title, CCB will be redesigning and publishing all of P. Curran's New Orleans novels of the 1990's.

Genres: Fiction

221 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 2015

Reviews

[The Literary Chick]

P. Curran came on the scene with his take on the 'strange story' genre, a type of writing that serves its unnerving terror in an atmospheric, surreal way, more psychological than out-and out horror writing. His stories are set in 1990's New Orleans. While Stay Out Of New Orleans and Naught But A Shadow were of this style, the third in the Trilogy, The Breathtaking Christa P, is more of the best of the pulp fiction type. Think Jim Thompson in 80's New Orleans and you got it. We have what seems to be an unreliable narrator (an escapee from a mental institution) who is actually more reliable than those around him. Coming to New Orleans to hide and make a fresh start, he crosses paths with an acquaintance from the past who, knowing his history, effectively blackmails him into spying on the man's ex-lover, with horrendous consequences.

[Jake Gallo]

"What came to me as I drove home from Balconis was that the vines hadn't just sprouted there on that roof. They had climbed there, inch by inch. And on instinct they had seized the weathervane, maybe over the course of years. As long as the black bird could turn, the vines could not grab it. But one day the wind returned after a still week or month to find the tendrils fixed upon the rooster's claws strongly enough to resist. All things grow until they interfere.

And I began to think about the hospital. Or, actually, about Yusef's jacket. He had a suit they let him keep in his closet, but we couldn't have closets with doors. So I always saw this suit hanging in his room. Over time it came apart. You get used to seeing things fray and weather in a place like that. But now I wondered exactly when it became shabby. Which was the one loose thread too many?"

Despite being a fan of the genre I admittedly don't read or watch a lot of relatively recent crime books and films because I often feel that their creators are assembling a patchwork from influences, following some preconceived (often ill-conceived) pattern of how pulp should be. THE BREATHTAKING CHRISTA P., thankfully and unsurprisingly, is peppered liberally with all the violence, humor and twists that crime fans need from a memorable novel but P. Curran's ripsnorter of a page-turner transcends simply checking off all the right boxes by taking the time with an understated observational quality to live and breathe in quiet moments of routine or intimate details like the specific color a dried bloodstain leaves in a porcelain tub or the way a shotgun shack is designed with "no hall, the doors to each room lined up so that a slug fired straight through the front door would exit the back door without hitting a wall." One becomes so absorbed by the atmosphere of the lively setting that you feel like a New Orleanian taking in another wild city day, not a tourist on a temporary escape promising to buy a house on the bayou and flaking out once the redeye rush home approaches. A tight, snappy number that's not afraid to get nasty with the perfect amount of ambiguity and respect for the reader's intelligence. Can't recommend this book enough, it's the real McCoy.

[Caitlin]

Like great first kisses it left me wanting more…