Books
Concrete Angel

by Patricia Abbott
Polis Books, June 2015, $14.95

If you find yourself craving suspense, Patricia Abbott’s Concrete Angel should more than satisfy those desires. Abbott wastes no time in plunging her readers into the sordid story she has to tell, as the two main characters, middle-aged Eve Moran and her young daughter Christine, find themselves dealing with the problem of a corpse in their apartment. The story of how they get out of that situation, and, more importantly, how they found themselves in it, makes for riveting reading.

Reading this well-crafted debut, many will likely find themselves thinking about the best of a variety of fine purveyors of noir, including the likes of James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, Robert Bloch, and Patricia Highsmith. Narrated by Christine, the book has a tell-all/true-confessions vibe to it, tempered with a morality lesson that could easily have come from the pages of Charles Biro’s infamous Crime Does Not Pay comic books. Readers will feel dread as to what Eva might do next, but won’t be able to disengage from voyeuristically experiencing her car wreck of a life.

Hank Wagner
Teri Duerr
5202
Abbott
June 2015
concrete-angel
14.95
Polis Books