WWW [Bloomberg] – It’s only February, but Christa Faust’s “Money Shot” has to be an early contender for mystery debut of the year.

Faust tells the story of Angel Dare, a retired porn star turned blue-movie agent, who finds herself on the run after the promise of a final bow before the cameras leaves her shot and left for dead.

“Money Shot” has no peer in hardboiled writing about the sex industry. Not that Faust makes it look like an Amway convention. She knows there are sleazeballs in the business — but she refuses to treat it as unique in that regard.

And she has a connoisseur’s appreciation for the golden age of smut, writing sadly of the sameness of today’s starlets, of the nastiness that feels so out of tune with the playfulness that was once the rule in dirty movies.

Faust accepts the existence of the gutter but doesn’t construct her entire worldview from that level. In Angel she captures the wised-up but still vulnerable voice you can find in interviews with similar performers from the glory days.

Angel is shrewd without being cynical, hardnosed without being hardhearted. Joining her are a passel of vivid supporting characters of the kind Hollywood once specialized in.

“Money Shot” is published by Hard Case Crime (252 pages, $6.99).