Sunset City

Short and anything but sweet, Sunset City paints a neon-soaked picture of Houston’s grimiest places, visited by a drunk and bereaved Charlotte Ford, trying to find solace after the death of her oldest friend. Danielle was murdered – beaten to death in a hotel room – and the cops are wondering why, after years of distance, Charlotte spoke to her just days before she died. Charlotte wonders the same thing, and can’t help but see herself as the turning point that led Danielle – clean enough now after a stint in prison – from a chipper evening out to being bludgeoned in a hotel. Charlotte finds respite among those who knew Danielle from her final job as a porn actress, even as they all take whatever they can to stave off the reality that someone killed Danielle, and no one knows who.

Enough for a contact high brought on just by reading it, this is the kind of book that is immersive in a way that is almost terrifying – addictive, though it seems trite to say that about a book about addicts. Everyone seems to have their poison: be it the heroin that drove Danielle to jail, Danielle’s mother’s obsession with money and power (which destroyed their relationship), or Charlotte’s mother’s addiction to prescription drugs, which ultimately caused her death just after Charlotte turned eighteen. Charlotte herself cannot let go of the memories of Danielle from her past, those moments in high school where all they had was each other, where they were each other’s sun in the sky. Sunset City is like a heady night out – electric with anticipation, joyously beautiful and agonisingly grim in turn, over in one intense evening, as sexually charged as a kiss against a wall in a darkened bar, and as unexpectedly violent as a punch out of nowhere. I was still reeling from this the day after – it almost needs a calming cup of tea and a couple of Panadol to recover from. Would it be that more books knocked you around like this.

Fiona Hardy