Edge City

Just out of prison, Soracco's light-fingered heroine, Reno, slips into the Club Istanbul (in an unspecified American city) for a few drinks. As she watches her meager stash vanish in alcohol, she recognizes an old friend, Susanna--professional name Su'ad the Fortunate--belly dancing on stage. Soon Reno is waitressing amidst the surface sleaze of B-girls and watered-down booze, her eye on the best chance to score some money. Upstairs lives the up-to-no-good Mr. Huntington; downstairs the new manager Sinclair observes the assembled lost souls eager to stuff crumpled greenbacks down the front of Su'ad's sequined bra. An atmosphere thick with the suggestion of villainy clears as blackmail and murder emerge, deeds committed by any one (or more) of an extensive cast of losers, including Reno, who seems destined never to get a break. Soracco ( Low Bite ) keeps her eye on minutiae; thus readers learn more than they may need to know about how to light a stage full of moving flesh. Meandering through pools of booze and moments of tawdry sex and petty larceny, Soracco's dense, bravura narrative is nevertheless a triumph of (hard-boiled) style over substance. (Nov.)