Review: Control Freak by Christa Faust

Control Freak is an erotic crime thriller set in the BDSM world of early 90s New York City. It is not ordinarily a subject I would have chosen but I've enjoyed Christa's more recent novels so much I wanted to go back and read her earlier work.

Caitlin McCullough inherited some money which has allowed her to write hard-boiled crime stories without requiring her to have a job to live. Her money is starting to run low and she is thinking that she needs to find something that pays better. She is seeing a NYPD detective, Mike Kiernan, who is considerably older than she. They have great sexual chemistry but she is not looking for love. Mike might be.

Wilson, a hacker friend, tells her about a gruesome murder, including sexual mutilation, that happened in the meat packing district. Her friend Mike has just started investigating the same crime. True crime might turn out to be her ticket and with information supplied by her friend, Caitlin figures she can get the jump on any competitors.

Caitlin learns that the victim was involved in the sadomasochistic culture. Caitlin begins her investigation at the House of Absinthe, a BDSM club. Unexpectedly, Caitlin finds herself pulled —not unwillingly— into the culture and she appears to be a natural Domina.

Control Freak is explicit about SM and the people who embrace the culture. I would not recommend it for anyone not comfortable exploring different lifestyles. I did enjoy the the book even if I'm not personally attracted to the culture. Faust created interesting characters, situations, and story lines. I'm not going to have myself fitted ball gag and rubbber suit but I like a good story and it doesn't matter if the subject is outside my comfort zone.

Faust does get a bit carried away with her similes and descriptions at times but this, her first novel, holds together quite well. You can see that she was a talented writer exploring those outside of the mainstream from the start. Her second book was Hoodtown (reviewed here) which is set in society where people wear lucha libre Mexican wrestling masks 24 hrs a day. Money Shot and Choke Hold have a woman in the porn trade as the protagonist. Butch Fatale, her most recent as of this writing, features a hardboiled lesbian private investigator.

Computers play a significan part in the story but the book was written mostly between 1993 and 1995 before the Internet as we currently know it existed. This is the age of pagers, dial-up modems, and bulletin boards. I wonder if millennials even know about BBSs which predate web sites and blogs. I broached the idea with Christa that, with a minor bit of editing, Control Freak could be easily modernized but she said that she would rather it stand as an artifact of the time rather than bring it forward.

Control Freak is available from Amazon. No Kindle version, just print and audio.