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Allen & Unwin, This Edition published March 2007
Reviewed by Sally Roddom
Francesco (Frank) Parisi, the sleazy owner of the strip club Red Room, has
been murdered. His body is found stuffed into a black plastic bag and
floating off a Melbourne beach. When his brother Salvatore sets out to
avenge his death, his main suspect is a stripper called Chloe. Enter
Chloe’s best friend Simone Kirsch, a stripper who currently works in a
Peepshow. Simone recently tried to join the Victorian police force, but
they rejected her because of her current job. Undeterred, Simone has
recently completed a Private Investigator’s course. She convinces
Salvatore that she can go undercover at the Red Room to find the real
murderer, to prove that Chloe’s innocence. Salvatore gives her two weeks,
and holds Chloe hostage.
Simone becomes a table/lap dancer at Red Room and launches into an
investigation. Questioning the girls at the club, she quickly discovers
there is no shortage of people who had reasons to kill Frank. Just as she
congratulates herself for a successful investigation she violently
discovers that her cover is blown. Now all she has to do is find out who
the murderer is and stay alive.
Author Leigh Redhead introduces us to a world that many of us have no idea
about. We meet a wide variety of characters, exotic dancers, strippers,
dominatrixes and submissives and all the sleazy characters that are drawn
to them. Add to the mix a rockabilly band, mobsters and dirty police and
Redhead brings alive a part of society that many of us will never
understand, or be part of. Leigh Redhead spent time in this world, having
worked as a stripper in the Melbourne scene for a while, so she is writing
about what she knows.
PEEPSHOW is a good read, full of black humour, hot sex and violence. None
of it gratuitous; and all of it appropriate for the setting. This is not a
book for a reader who has problems with the sex industry. However, the
girls will surprise you – no blonde bimbos being used here, instead most
of them are very intelligent, and some are even university students,
leaving you wondering who is using whom! There is drug use in this book,
and its usage is accepted as normal by the characters that inhabit this
world. However the reader’s role is not to condemn but to read and enjoy a
great romp of a murder investigation. PEEPSHOW is the first in a series,
followed by RUBDOWN and CHERRY PIE, and Redhead is currently writing a
fourth.
May 2007 review originally published on Murder & Mayhem
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