It is 1887, and Alma Rosales is on the hunt for stolen opium. Trained in espionage by the Pinkerton Detective Agency―but dismissed for bad behavior and a penchant for going undercover as a man―Alma now works for Delphine Beaumond, the seductive mastermind of a West Coast smuggling ring.
Crackles like a fast-traveling fire, immersing its reader in a time and place long gone. Impressions and incidents fly at us, sometimes perhaps a hair too quickly (The Best Bad Things might benefit from a few more moments in which Alma, and the reader, can breathe) but intoxicatingly so ... Carrasco is a gifted wordsmith...and an imaginative storyteller ... irresistibly toggling between crime fiction and literary novel...a swaggering introduction to this heroine; here’s hoping she’ll return soon.
Carrasco’s prose, which is so evocative it ignites all the senses, even as the thunderous pacing leaves you scrambling to pick up on all the clues. The action scenes will fill your nose with the acrid smell of gunpowder, and leave your tongue with the metallic taste of blood. Carrasco gives Alma all kinds of appetites—for sex, mischief, power, and more—then feeds them with one lusty chapter after another. Society may push Alma into a liminal space, but she is absolutely living it up.
Love crime fiction? Love historical fiction? Have I got a book for you ... will keep you on the edge of your seat and maybe even wondering if you’ve lost your mind. Sexy, fun, serious and unputdownable.
