Miami Purity is a book which will appeal to the seedier
side of human nature. From the first glimpse of the dust jacket
of this hot little number it’s lust at first sight – despite your
better judgement. Dressed in a provocative, hot pink jacket with
an embossed zipper running down the front suggestively open to
the navel, the book flaunts itself at the eager reader with promises
of "Hot Sex, White Trash, Black Humour, Cold-Blooded Murder".
What more could a boy or girl ask for? Moving swiftly past the
cheap thrill of the dressing, it’s straight down to business without
so much as a polite introduction or a few pages of foreplay to
get you in the mood. This is not a book that skillfully and subtly
seduces the reader into willing submission. It’s a book that grabs
you firmly by the crotch and dares you to blink.
The spectacularly sleazy story centres around Sherri Parlay who
has hustled through the last few years of her chequered career
stripping in the lowlife bars of downtown Miami. But at 36, and
with gravity no longer so kind to her assets as it once was, she
decides it’s time to hang up her G-String and tassels and make
a clean break from the booze, the drugs and the numerous men of
her past. Her fresh start is symbolically found in the shape of
a job at Miami Purity, a dry cleaners in a good neighbourhood
run by a mother and son team. Sherri’s quest for a white picket
fence life takes another turn in the right direction when she
takes up with owner’s son Payne, a seemingly straightlaced, regular
sort of guy. But Payne and his mother have anything but a normal
mother and son relationship and Sherri soon discovers that working
in a dry cleaners can be a dirty business. As Payne reveals a
surprising side to his nature, events take on a momentum of their
own and Sherri’s life spirals murderously out of control.
Miami Purity is driven by its characters’ lustful perversities
and unquenchable sexual desires. If this book had been written
by a man, it could well be accused of playing on male fantasies
but Vicki Hendricks’ tongue-in-cheek, almost deadpan delivery
just about manages to steer the book away from mere voyeuristic
titillation. Curiously for a book full of red-blooded carnal action
and athletic bed-hopping, Miami Purity is about as a erotic as a cheap peepshow,
only it’s quite a bit more funny and a deal more sordid. The gratification
is predictably immediate, it’s all over very quickly and rather
messily, and once the cheap thrill has gone you can’t help but
feel slightly sullied by the whole sordid affair. And a little
guilty for having enjoyed it so much.
Reviewed by Jon Mitchell
