Sing Her Down
Ivy PochodaA Best Mystery Fiction Book of 2023, Baltimore Sun
"A rage-brimmed, razor-sharp, feminist neo-western about two women who meet in an LA prison & the cat-and-mouse game that follows their release"--°°°
Ivy Pochoda’s decidedly noir novels excavate a part of Los Angeles most people would prefer to ignore — the homeless camps, the run-down motels, the bits of sidewalks & alleys where someone has carved a home of sorts. She peoples this landscape with women on the margins who are plunged into one chaotic situation after another. A bleak setting to be sure, but brilliantly explored as Pochoda burrows deep into her characters’ psyches.
“Sing Her Down,” Pochoda’s tour de force, looks at the rage women may carry, why a person — in these cases women — would abandon a comfortable, middle-class living for crime & violence. Pochoda sifts through myriad literary tropes, including allusions to Macbeth, mythology, even a bit of a Greek chorus while not losing sight that “Sing Her Down” is a crime novel. — Oline H. Cogdill, Baltimore Sun