Rough Trade

Starred review from February 19, 2024
Carrasco’s outstanding sequel to The Best Bad Things delivers even more grit, queerness, and 19th-century swashbuckling than its predecessor. High society smuggler Delphine Beaumond has shifted her opium trade operations from Port Townsend to the emerging city of Tacoma, Wash., in 1888. Her accomplice and lover, Alma Rosales—who now lives mostly as her male alter ego, Jack Camp—runs the team that off-loads opium at the docks and prepares it for distribution via the Northern Pacific Railroad. Police put eyes on the port after two dead men sporting track marks wash up nearby, placing new pressure on Alma to keep the trade flowing and everyone out of jail. Then Bess Spencer, Alma’s former Pinkerton colleague—and first love—shows up in Tacoma, throwing her into a tailspin. Meanwhile, Ben Collins, the new-in-town lover of one of Alma’s male dock workers, offers to join the crew when an illness leaves them shorthanded, but Alma can’t decide if he’s on the level or spying for the cops. Each of the main characters walks a tightrope between caring for their friends and protecting their self-interest, and the booming port city’s political drama provides a heated backdrop for the cat and mouse game between law enforcement and the smugglers. Carrasco presents Alma/Jack as more explicitly trans this time out, raising fascinating questions about the era’s gender dynamics, which she fleshes out with vivid depictions of men’s cruising bars and Ben’s internal struggles about his sexuality. Readers who love to root for the rogues will gobble this up. Agent: Stacia Decker, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner.

March 1, 2024
Emerging industrialization and its concomitant power struggles provide the backdrop for Carrasco's continuation of The Best Bad Things (2018). Ex-Pinkerton detective Alma returns in full disguise as Jack, a Tacoma drug runner, concealing her gender with a practiced masculine physique and demeanor. A series of local overdoses is bringing unwanted attention to Alma's dock, interfering with her lucrative smuggling organization. She reunites with her former partner, Bess, to locate the murderer, solidify her contacts, and misdirect the police. Ambitious reporter Ben also assumes a false identity as an itinerant laborer looking to expose the transnational opium trade. While undercover, Ben enjoys a refreshing sense of freedom and acceptance among the dockworkers, allowing him to explore his burgeoning sexuality. Carrasco's characters display emotional depth and intelligence amid escalating danger in a lawless atmosphere. Paradoxical tenderness ennobles Alma's crew's harsh existence and highlights Ben's precarious standing as a member of the privileged class. This is a fast-paced and racy thriller that intriguingly explores gender roles and sexuality repressed and (covertly) expressed during its late-1800s setting.

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March 1, 2024
Carrasco revisits the world she created in The Best Bad Things (2018). When this story begins, Alma Rosales has left her past behind and reinvented herself as Jack Camp, smuggler. In partnership with her former lover, she controls the flow of opium from Canada throughout the West Coast from her base in Tacoma. When a double homicide threatens to put her operation at risk, Alma thinks she has the situation in hand--until it's clear that she does not. Then two newcomers arrive in town. One is her former partner from the Pinkerton's Women's Bureau. The other is a journalist whose interest in the opium trade might become a problem. Carrasco introduced readers to Alma in her last novel, and the sequel is a similar mix of gritty historical fiction and crime. She repopulates the past with the queer people and queer culture that have often been erased from history. Carrasco does a terrific job of conjuring a port city at the end of the 19th century. Her description of the physical world her characters inhabit is evocative, but the carefully rendered setting only underscores their one-dimensional nature. It's entirely possible that readers who enjoyed The Best Bad Things will want to know what happens next for its characters, but readers encountering them here for the first time may find them intriguing without being convincing. The author's penchant for lingering over physical details also makes it difficult to appreciate this book as a mystery. The pace is just very slow--so slow that it's not easy to stay invested in the story's outcome. A novel that straddles a couple of genres without quite satisfying the demands of either.

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