Review - The Get Off by Christa Faust

The Get Off (Angel Dare, 3)

Christa Faust
Titan Books, 18 March 2025
Available as: PB, 256pp, e   
Source: Advance copy from the author
ISBN(PB): 9781835411735

I'm grateful to Christa for sending me a signed advance copy of The Get Off to consider for review.

The Get Off is the third part (the final part?) of a series of novel featuring Angel Dare, adult entertainment performer, fugitive - and killer.

As the story open, Angel (given name Gina Moretti) is closing in on her sworn enemy, Vukasin. The two seem to exist in a bubble of mutual antipathy, and Angel's determined to end him. (One has the sense that if she achieves this she'll then actually be left without a purpose in life, so out of control have things spun for her).

Well, it all goes wrong, and Angel's on the run (even more on the run?) now branded a cop killer. What's more, she faces a personal Situation that messes with her in so many, very personal, ways, limiting her ability to simply disappear.

What follows is essentially a trail of destruction. Angel has hunters after her, who don't care what collateral damage they cause, so those around her are at high risk. But more than that, she seems to have a nose for trouble - not so she can avoid it, but so she can land in the middle of it. Travelling with a peripatetic bullfighter (it's OK, he doesn't kill them) seems likely to land her or him in danger sooner or later and sure enough, it does. Angel blames herself for this and yes, perhaps she makes some bad choices here (not that I'm sure she actually has many options). However there are other bad guys and girls out there and they don't hold back from dragging her into their murky plans.

So there is death after death, a trail of killings that, surely, one could see from space. Not the ideal way to stay below the radar, really. Still, if Angel can just stay ahead of the pursuit she may have a haven where she can find shelter and sort out her Situation...

This was an action-packed story full of narrow escapes, slaughter of innocents (and the guilty) and the sort of moments when you go back and reread to confirm that, yes, she really did do that. Angel is a conscientious - or perhaps I should say, conscience wracked - narrator who's fully aware that she has crossed numerous red lines. She agonises over it, and regrets the carnage, but nevertheless, she presses on. What else can she do? Despite the bloodletting, Angel is a sympathetic protagonist and I hoped against hope that she would find a good end. Nevertheless the story is realistic, indeed it pulls absolutely no punches in depicting a number of rod different, but gruesome deaths. (Probably not one for the  fainthearted, but then, you'd hardly be browsing "Hard Case Crime" if you were, I think).

A great story though from the first page and one I'd strongly recommend.

For more information about The Get Off, see the publisher's website here.