The thing I most admire about Ivy Pochoda’s These Women is how both feet are firmly in two worlds that she’s willing to write about.
In making this a character-driven crime tale with a focus on the sex workers (maybe some of them victimized?), we get a clear picture about the unglamorous life of sex work, especially sex work in low income areas. The need for cash, the dehumanization, the stigma…and yet, these women just go about their business dealing with it all. There’s no glorification or seeing themselves as feminist icons or whatever; they’re doing what they have to do to survive.
On the other hand, the non-SW POVs talk about either the jealousy women feel towards them, the need to “save them,” or…especially painfully…turn them into art (or worse). A perfect emphasis on America’s hypocritical virgin-whore paradigm when it comes to women, this book truly covers the breadth of the experience.
The mystery is interesting in its own way. It’s not a stone cold whodunnit but you get the sense that you want the killer caught as soon as possible because you don’t know if you’re reading the POV of someone who is about to die and/or lose someone close to them. It’s certainly character-focused but there is suspense here.
Also, this is a thoroughly Los Angeles novel but not the LA of Beverly Hills or Hollywood or Santa Monica. This is south LA: the LA no one in power wants to think about, the LA where those people live (according to the racists), the LA where a serial killer preying on sex workers isn’t going to get top priority by the LAPD. West Adams felt like a fully realized, immersed place; Ivy Pochoda does a great job here with atmosphere. It belongs with the city’s best crime tales even if it’s not packaged in the hardboiled/noir way they usually are.
One of the best things I’ve read this year and one of the few serial killer stories I appreciate.