Angel’s Back: What’s Next

Brenda G. Wright

Publisher: Xlibris Pages: 200 Price: (paperback) $19.99 ISBN: 9781477131534 Reviewed: November, 2012 Author Website: Visit »

Welcome to the dangerous realm of the criminal underworld. In their startling roles, meet Angel and her daughter Baby Girl, the story’s fearsome anti-heroines. Angel is an assassin ready to kill at the drop of a hat. Baby Girl is Angel’s protégé, but equally ruthless, a voluptuous and seductive killer relishing every moment of a kill. Once Angel or Baby Girl set about to seek their revenge, there is little to stand in their way, whether it be the FBI or the Columbian Mafia.

Angel’s Back presents a new breed of anti-heroines that may sate bloodthirsty readers with an itchy bloodlust for hardboiled violence. There are indeed plenty of graphic scenes to go around. Other readers, however, will feel subjected to wave after wave of gruesome and gratuitous violence. By the end of the story, it becomes clear that the author had little intention of bestowing a tiny drop of humanity—flawed or even misdirected—to her antiheroines.

What develops is a tale of brutish conquest and revenge curiously reminiscent of the morally immune Mickey and Malory in the hyperkinetic Natural Born Killers The heartless Angel and her daughter Baby Girl lack even a scintilla of redeeming qualities, except perhaps their sexuality. They are psychopaths and little else.

To make things worse, chapter titles announce what happens (“The Murder of Olivia the FBI Agent”), therefore tipping off the reader, And the book is riddled with a large number of errors in grammar and usage. A rigorous and professional edit, both for content and style, could have prevented the book from falling short of the finish line.

Also available in hardcover.

Author's Current Residence
St. Louis, Missouri