Rush

Like Kim Wozencraft, I too am an ex-cop and an ex-con, . There are two things I can comment on. One is how authentic it is, how well it portrays the life of a cop with a drug habit. The second is how well it's written. For authenticity, all I can tell you is that I was also a cop with a drug habit and it doesn't get any more real than Ms. Wozencraft's book. If you want to vicariously experience something that no sane person would want to go through in real life, read this book. Read this book. As far as how well it's written, no big complaints there. It was a bestseller, as well as being made into a pretty popular movie. That should tell you what the general public thinks. As far as the critics, they seem to have liked the book as well. If there were any new-writer mistakes in the book that would have normally drawn the scorn of the critics, they were lost in the grit, which the critics admired. They liked the book because it was real. I don't much like the book anymore for the same reason. I lived that life too. I recently tried to re-read the book and it gave me night sweats. It was too nerve-wracking for me. That's how authentic it is. If what you want is--as the critics love to say--gritty reality, this is your book. Get the book. It'll be money well-spent.

Rush, written by Kim Wozencraft, a narcotics officer has a constant struggle between her job and her addiction to narcotics. Kristen Cates (main character) partnered up with the top narcotics agent Jim Raynor with the Pasadena police department who got her started on narcotics. She finds many techniques on how to survive on the streets and keep her job. Jim dies from over use of narcotics and Kristen like all bad guys gets caught. Rush, is written in a style of its own. Love, suspense and intrigue. Rush, is written in the point view of a former narcotics agent (Kim Wozencraft) which really brings the book alive. Thoughts from her own experiences bring you to the scene no details left out. The audience keeps looking for more excitement

What mean reviews for such a precise, measured and insightful coverage of such a tawdry and even brutal subject. I think that earlier reviewers are distracted by the fact that(1) Rush was made into a film, with which they make an implicit comparison and (2) that while it is a "novel" it is very much fact-based. Take it as just a story. It is superbly written with a clarity of style that is almost that of Scott Fitzgerald in his last short stories about his personal crash. It stands out for the narrator's lack of self-pity and simple laying out of a life in collapse. The last unravelling of the inevitabilities of the story line do lose pace and coherence, but this is all in all a mini-jewel, a book that is moving and memorable -- which is waht novels should be, afterall