author wants to emphasize the difference between the dancers’ professional lives and their personal ones. For convenience, I’ll refer to them by their stage names in this review.

As Boom Town begins, one of its dancers, a possibly underage girl going by the name of Charm, stops showing up for work without an explanation. This scenario isn’t uncommon in the strip club business, and Lyriq, a former dancer who is now the club’s dance manager, is willing at first just to write Charm off the club’s books. However, a young man shows up at the club and says Charm rents a basement apartment in his house from his mother. He tells Lyriq that Charm hasn’t been home for several days, and he is concerned.

This revelation brings back memories of a similar disappearance of a dancer named Lucky at some unspecified time previously. Back then, Lyriq and Lucky were the club’s star attractions onstage and a couple offstage. Lucky broke off the relationship and disappeared soon afterward. The only other link between the two disappearances is a wealthy white club customer who calls himself T and spent a lot of time and money on both dancers who disappeared. Lyriq suspects foul play and begins investigating.

Most of Boom Town is told in the form of alternating chapters. Lyriq narrates the present-day story, while Lucky narrates the events that occurred in the months before her disappearance. In the last third of the book, the author shifts the perspective several times and involves other characters. Although this sounds confusing, the story is fairly easy to follow. The author sometimes uses these multiple perspectives to inject additional mystery into the narrative and conceal what is actually occurring until the book’s conclusion, when all is explained. In a brief prologue set several days after Lyriq’s narrative begins, a minor character discovers a dead body in a lake near Atlanta. Hence, readers know immediately that the present-day events lead to violence of some sort.

On one level, Boom Town is an excellent thriller, except for a couple of cheap narrative tricks that artificially heighten suspense. The author shifts between timelines skillfully, gradually explaining characters’ motivations and some events that are unclear in earlier parts of the book. I was highly impressed by the author’s skill at creating and ultimately solving a mystery. In fact, I have been more reticent than usual in writing this review to avoid as many of the surprises and twists in the narrative as possible.

However, Boom Town goes beyond the boundaries of a well-crafted thriller. It explores the dual lives of the dancers, their professional and their personal lives. The goings-on at strip clubs in general and Black clubs in particular are probably unfamiliar to many readers. The author does a great job of showing how these dancers view their jobs and how they connect with customers (and extract as much cash from them as possible) over the course of a couple of five-minute dances. Boom Town shows the psychology that drives the business (which is neither strictly dancing nor prostitution) from the perspectives of both the dancer and the customer.

Beyond the club life, Boom Town reveals the personal lives of Lyriq and Lucky, as well as some of the other dancers. It reveals how the dancers try to separate what they do on stage from what they do when they leave the club. I gained valuable insight into Lyriq’s thought processes, not just as a woman trying to separate aspects of her life, but as a Black woman coping with additional issues. This racial perspective was something very different and fascinating to me.

Boom Town contains considerable graphic language and describes various sexual acts, so those who are squeamish or uncomfortable with such material should avoid it. This book is a complete departure from the author’s previous work. However, it is the work of a polished professional, highly skilled at creating a narrative that works on multiple levels. Boom Town is a great mystery thriller, with some twists I didn’t see coming. But it is also an in-depth look at a seldom-explored slice of big-city nightlife and the even more seldom-explored lives of the women who work in those clubs, both on and offstage. Book sales should be booming for Boom Town.    

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.