Running on the Edge Series by Lisette Kristensen (Explicit Crime Novel(s), 2018).
The self-published e-book is composed of the first two (relatively short) novels in a projected series. To fully appreciate some references in the second you really should’ve read the first, so packaging them together is a wise move on the author’s part.
Available from Amazon’s kindle store, this series tells of the often deadly and revenge-oriented adventures of a young woman who grew up dirt-poor in the Los Angeles area. Baleigh isn’t an evil person, as such. But she has a decided penchant for rough sex, fast motorcycles and bikers. Potential readers should be aware that there is frequent, detailed and graphic erotic content here. And there’s plenty of violence as well.
As a teen, Baleigh had been part of the Raging Rebels, a biker gang/cycle club headquartered in a low-income area of Venice Beach. She drifted away from them and, as the series opens, she’s a rookie cop. A cop named Travis is her partner, in bed as well as on the job. Her concerns about mixing her personal and professional life are legit, yet they’re suddenly rendered irrelevant when a seemingly routine call leads to a fatal ambush. Travis is dead and guilt-ridden Baleigh allows herself to be made a scapegoat, despite the fact that she was the one who wanted to follow proper procedures (call for backup, keep her partner in sight, etc.). In any case, her over-confident partner/lover is gone and she is left despairing.
She has just begun rebuilding her life when a corrupt police official blackmails her into rejoining the gang while reporting to him undercover. It seems the Raging Rebels are connected to the site of the killing and Baleigh is tasked with finding out who did it.
Of course nobody just walks out on a gang and gets welcomed back easily. Baleigh is required to prove her loyalty to Snake, the club’s scheming president. Part of it involves enduring a brutal ritual beating at the hands of the group’s female contingent. Worse, she is required to commit a murderous act to further cement her position. This leads to the chilling self-discovery: The power of commiting criminal violence excites her sexually.
She allies herself with Tommy, the club’s top enforcer and falls in love with him. He’s a rough, tough sort–yet has surprising depths and eventually returns her feelings. They become a couple: The biker stud and his old lady.
Twists and turns result in Baleigh uncovering a split in the biker gang. She’s captured and tortured by a disloyal faction, who were also responsible for Travis’s death. Tommy and others rush to save her, though she is the one who actually avenges her lost lover.
The second novel takes her and Tommy to Las Vegas, on a mission to merge Snake’s club with a local outfit. Things don’t go as hoped. Somebody takes out her new lover and she vows revenge a second time. Discovering who is behind this new murder brings her into contact with a couple other biker chicks who eventually go join her to enact drive-by justice atop their roaring motorcycles.
That’s where the second novel ends–a crude form of justice achieved, but with Baleigh and one of the other biker babes now a team and likely to face more danger from surviving allies of those they eliminated.
It all sounds pretty wild and exciting, and to an extent it is. But there are problems that hamper the effect.
One of the major drawbacks with self-published material is that the writer is generally left to self-edit their own work. The author informs me that the work has already been through several rounds of editorial input. And yet a sprinkling of uncorrected typos mar the text (examples: ‘were’ where it should’ve been ‘we’re’; ‘cache’ where’cachet’ was obviously intended).
Worse, there is an abundance of misplaced, miss-used or just plain missing punctuation. It makes for a choppy reading experience. In some cases, whole sentences are mangled to the point of not making sense.
Then there’s the ‘snicker’ factor. Many writers have particular words or phrases they unconsciously overuse. In my own case, I have to be vigilant lest too many of my characters are seen ‘pursing their lips.’ In Kristensen’s case, everybody here seems to be ‘snickering’ again and again, to the point it’s not just distracting, but absurd and fairly annoying.
These editing problems undermine both the narrative and dialogue portions of the book. That’s a shame, ’cause the storyline has a certain brutal, lawless and aggressively erotic appeal.
A last problem is that things occasionally get repetitive–Baleigh has the tendency to think something and then say the exact same thing aloud. But at other times Kristensen’s passionate writing hits home–especially in the case of passages of the profane and often terse biker dialogue.
It makes me wish I could more fully recommend this book. But alas, no. If rough crime writing with explicit sex and violence appeals, you might give it a look.
Just don’t expect a flawless piece of work.
jimleeauthor 