Ship rigging rattles fifty feet out in the bay.

A saloon rattles with shouts and melodeon’s groaning.” Candy-colored lanterns light the crowded mouths of pleasure houses. “Outside, everything feels tight and shiny, crowded with energy. It is razor sharp, undoubtedly descriptive to please the senses, and witty. The first thing that stood out to me was the writing in this novel. are baffled and, watch as they will, they cannot find evidence enough to bring this man to justice.“

The subordinate members obey a system… some prominent citizen whose reputation in the commercial and social world is untainted…. It makes its presence known, yet it’s itself unknown. San Francisco Chronicle, 1893: “The opium ring of the Northwest is a fearful, shadowy, impalpable something shadowy in form, but most substantial in fact. Amidst the dirt of the trade, the characters are edgy, the scenes are explicit and the atmosphere reeks of dark, pungent alleys, infused with betrayal, espionage and murder. This makes it a perfect setting for a historical fiction novel with such a daring plot. Inspired by one of the busiest seaports on the West Coast in the US, Townsend was a well-documented hot spot for smuggling in the late 1880’s. *Trigger Warning, book contains very explicit content and violence.*

One wrong move and she could be unmasked: as a woman, as a traitor, or as a spy.Ī propulsive, sensual tour de force, The Best Bad Things introduces Katrina Carrasco, a bold new voice in crime fiction. But it’s getting harder and harder to keep her cover stories straight and to know whom to trust. All this, while sending coded dispatches to the circling Pinkerton agents to keep them from closing in.Īlma’s enjoying her dangerous game of shifting identities and double crosses as she fights for a promotion and an invitation back into Delphine’s bed. In disguise as the scrappy dockworker Jack Camp, this should be easy-once she muscles her way into the local organization, wins the trust of the magnetic local boss and his boys, discovers the turncoat, and keeps them all from uncovering her secrets. When product goes missing at their Washington Territory outpost, Alma is tasked with tracking the thief and recovering the drugs. Trained in espionage by the Pinkerton Detective Agency-but dismissed for bad behavior and a penchant for going undercover as a man-Alma now works for Delphine Beaumond, the seductive mastermind of a West Coast smuggling ring. It is 1887, and Alma Rosales is on the hunt for stolen opium.

The best bad things katrina carrasco