SUMMER READING

Miami Purity by Broward County's Vicki Hendricks is strong stuff. Steamy. Sexy. Graphic. Violent. There's a word for that genre - noir.

Yes, the genre virtually invented by James M. Cain of The Postman Always Rings Twice fame. It's tough to write and the list of really good American noir writers is short, but Hendricks doesn't let Cain or her readers down. She follows in Cain's footsteps, but adds her own twists and she does it brilliantly. From the opening lines, you know trouble's afoot:

Hank was drunk and he slugged me - it

wasn't the first time - and I picked up the

radio and caught him across the forehead

with it. It was one of those big boom boxes

with the cassette player and recorder, but I

never figured it would kill him.

Those lines reveal this is not a happy book. They also indicate there won't be a happy ending. For anyone. And therein lies the noir.

The story opens when Sherri, who's dried out from a long, wet drunk goes job-hunting along Biscayne Boulevard and Dixie Highway. She's been a bartender and a stripper among other professions of various merit, but she's determined to get away from 'the life'." She spies a job opening posted in the window of Miami Purity, a dry cleaning

establishment, and enters.

She knows she wants the job when she spots (small joke, couldn't help myself) Payne Mahoney, the owner's son. To quote Sherri, "I took a look at that baby face, and those Jagger lips, and I got hot."

The attraction is mutual, but there's a major problem. Payne's mother Brenda. She keeps a tight rein on her good-looking son who lives with her. Financially, he's forced to tap the till for food money and word is that he'd been involved with a former employee and the girl disappeared. Such unbridled lust must be appeased and punished and so it is.

As the story unfolds, we learn just how far Brenda will go to protect her son, how far Sherri will go to have him and, most interestingly, we learn how cleverly Payne manipulates both women.

Riveting is an appropriate adjective for this book. ¦

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