Real Easy by Marie Rutkoski

Published by Henry Holt and Co. on January 18, 2022

Way too many thrillers have taken strip clubs as their themes. Usually, they are written from a male perspective. Sometimes, the writing is voyeuristic. Sometimes, the strip clubs exist for atmosphere, as Bada Bing! did in The Sopranos. Often, the stories take as a given that the strippers are performing for crude men as the natural outcome of a harsh life that presents few options. They remind me of Howard Stern interviewing sex workers (“So did your father molest you?”). The stripper-with-a-rough-life-but-a-heart-of-gold is often the extent of character development in strip club thrillers, particularly when (as is usually true) the strippers are collateral or secondary characters. Real Easy departs from the norm by making dancers the central characters and by exploring their lives in realistic detail, avoiding cliches and stereotypes of victimization.

The strip club is apparently in a suburb of Chicago. The first central character is Samantha Lind (stage name Ruby), whose boyfriend Nick reminds her that she is “part boy” when he wants to be mean. She has a boyish body thanks to a misplaced chromosome, but her new breasts make her feel more like a woman. Samantha is the club’s top earner but she’s always willing to give advice to the other dancers when she sees them making stupid mistakes (like drinking with a customer at the bar when she could be selling him dances in the champagne room).

Samantha lives with Nick. She disappears after giving Kimberly (stage name Lady Jade) a ride home, although Kimberly’s body is soon discovered. The killer ran their car off the road, leaving Kimberly’s body in a field and apparently abducting Samantha.

Detective Holly Meylin and her partner Victor investigate Nick and the club regulars who recently had contact with Samantha or Kimberly. Embarrassingly, one of the regulars, Tony Rabideaux, is a cop. Tony seems to have an alibi, as does Dale, the club owner. The dancers regard Dale as strict but reasonably fair. He keeps his hands to himself and is protective of his strippers, provided they earn their keep.

The other central character is a racially mixed dancer named Georgia (stage name Gigi). Georgia wants the club owner to believe that she’s taking care of her sick mother, which was true until her mother died. Now she has a built-in excuse for tardiness or missing shifts. Georgia knows she needs to find a new gig because “you have to be something more than beautiful to make a life for yourself that won’t end in despair.” Echoing that thought, another dancer observes that “women are allowed to feel powerful for ten years, and then they turn thirty and men barely look at them again.”

Like all workplaces, alliances are formed, backs are bitten. Employees help or undermine each other according to their natures. While the dancers have varying degrees of damage in their lives, Marie Rutkoski makes clear that damage does not dictate a profession. Holly, whose husband accidentally left their child in an overheated car and caused his death, has more damage than any of the novel’s strippers.

Real Easy works on multiple levels. Rutkoski’s prose is vivid and graceful. The setting and atmosphere are remarkable. The characters are crafted with a blend of realism and compassion. The plot is almost secondary, given the novel’s other merits, but the whodunit is far from obvious. The solution doesn’t come from out of the blue — a reader who pays attention might guess the killer’s identity before the reveal — but the story is plausible. Tension builds effectively as the plot nears its climax. Real Easy is an excellent novel and the best I’ve read in the strip club subgenre of crime fiction.

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