If you thought Joya Bonner was a kick-ass investigative reporter when she went after Sammy “the Bull” Gravano in the novel FUNERAL HOTDISH, imagine what she’s like when she goes after sex trafficking of her honorary niece in the sequel, THEDEADGIRLINTHEVACANTLOT.
A sampling reads:
Joya could taste the bile rising from her stomach as she scrolled through page after page after page of females for sale on Backpage.com.
It wasn’t that she was naive about prostitution. It actually had never bothered her much—if that’s what women wanted to do with their bodies, that was their business. She was bothered that the customers—the men creating the crime by buying the offer—usually walked free while the women were prosecuted. That seemed half-assed to her, not to be too punny about it.
But this was different. Forget Heidi Fleiss and her $5,000-a-night escorts; forget suburban housewives who spend afternoons making extra bucks; forget any discrete liaison between consenting men and women. From the moment she typed Backpage.com into her computer, she was led into an ugly subculture. There was no magic world behind this curtain, only raw, naked lust.
The screen that opened up invited “Choose a location.” Joya thought all 50 states were represented on this list, some with a couple entries, others with dozens. California had 34. New York wasn’t far behind with 26. Her home state of North Dakota had four sites: Bismarck, Fargo, Grand Forks and Minot. Neighboring Minnesota had seven. Arizona had eight, from Flagstaff to Tucson, Yuma to Show Low. She clicked on Phoenix.