Molls Like It Hot 

By Darren Dash

Blurb: 
Evie Brown used to serve in the Army, until a tragic loss forced him to return to civilian life earlier than planned. Now he drives one of London's iconic black cabs. On a dark, wet night, he gives a lift to a wounded gangster, and everything changes from that point on.

When the gangster gets in touch some time later, offering Eyrie a small fortune if he will take care of a mysterious young woman for a few nights, Eyrie is suspicious and hesitant. He can see trouble ahead, but the money will change his life for the better, so he reluctantly agrees to become a temporary guardian. But some deals should never be struck, and his charge turns out to be far more of a handful than he had ever anticipated. As twist follows twist and the bodies start to mount, Eyrie gets backed into a blood-soaked corner and must resort to desperate, inventive measures if he is to stand any chance of seeing his mission through and making it out of the weekend alive.

Fast-paced, action-packed, gritty London-based noir, inspired by the likes of Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, with a large tip of the hat to the Billy Wilder movie Some Like It Hot.

Review: 
I received this as an arc a few weeks back. I've ashamedly haven't read any of Darren Dash adults books before this one. I definitely plan to read more of them. I have read a few of his children books under the name Darren Shan.

I've not read a gangster story before, but I do appreciate gangster movies and TV Shows so when I read the blurb I instantly agreed to the arc with no doubts that it wouldn't good.

Darren Dash is a great writer but seeing it in an adult book, you can see how amazing his writing truly is. The writing in this book had a great flow, very descriptive and really natural dialogue. The characters all had their unique personalities and that really came through in the book.

When I began reading the book, I knew instantly that I liked the writing style as the book starts out with a description of a taxi driver sitting looking out at a wet cold London and then jumped straight into the action. 6 pages in I was hooked.

The book was very fast paced and I was really happy with the length of it. Any longer and it wouldn't have been very good. The snappiness of it was what kept the nice flow of the plot. Now I'm not going to say it was perfect. It did have some slow scenes, some were more dialogue than the continuation of the plot. But in some cases these scenes were good and needed as it showed us more of the main character.

If you looking into this and think that because it's a gangster story it's going to be all doom and gloom. Yes there is plenty of that but there is also really funny scenes and funny things said by characters. Such as a joke about Jesus riding a canoe. The imagery of that made me have a little giggle.

The main character is Eyrie Brown a taxi driver with a darker past. The book was written in his perspective as he deals with the task from gangster boss Lewis Brue to look after a woman named Toni. Eyrie is a really interesting character, and we find out so much about him as the story goes on. I loved his character development. We also see another side of Toni as the book progresses and I really appreciate that character development too.

Although I do admit, I did feel there was too many characters at one point being thrown about. Lewis lists all of his friends in one chapter and just seemed a bit too much for the most part. Some of them were mentioned again later on a bit more but the rest were barely mentioned probably could have been left out.

The part I loved the most in this book was the ending, I could not predict it. There was so many twists straight after the other I couldn't put the book down. It was a great conclusion to this book. I really enjoyed the book and if Darren Dash was planning to make anymore books in this universe, I'd recommend a prequel about Lewis Brue. Love to know how he became a gang boss.

I highly recommend this book. It was something a bit different to what I'm use to, something not fantasy for change. But a welcomed change, I'm glad I read it.

Rating: 4 runes out of 5

written by Lauren