A real contender
Tale of female ex-cons 'Sing Her Down' best of the year

 hadn’t read anything by or even heard of Ivy Pochoda until a couple of months ago. Her publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux has always been good about sending me announcements of upcoming crime fiction, and I’ve reviewed many of their excellent books. But Pochoda must have fallen through my cracks, or I fell through theirs. 

So I’m more than excited to have heard the chatter and bring you her new release, “Sing Her Down.” This is an extraordinary book of a gracious 272 pages about two women we meet in a state penitentiary in Arizona: Florence “Florida” Baum and Diosmary “Dios” Sandoval.

In the 20-some years I’ve been scouring publisher catalogues, making contacts and reading trade publications, I can’t remember a single book staged in a women’s penitentiary. “Sing Her Down” is my first exposure to the very different world of inveterate female sociopaths, and believe me when I tell you, this is a trip you cannot afford to sit out if you are a freshman crime fiction reader. And for veteran “Murder Ink” readers, don’t let this one go; spring for the hardcover. So far, this is the book of the year, and I suspect Pochoda can do no worse than tie for the honor.

Within this exciting and odiously realistic tale, Pochoda has conjured the gnawing certainty that prisons – and we now have to believe women’s prisons especially – are near enough, if not exactly like this horrible place where we meet Florida and Dios. And we spend not quite a moment too long inside before the two are paroled.  

This is not a Mickey Spillane street cred novel or a startling Stieg Larsson book. It’s not big-screen graphic, although a scene or two in prison where the guards intentionally turn their backs to keep internal control are what you might expect in an agitation factory. 

Just before we spend too much time among the inmate population, we are relieved, along with Florida and Dios, that an early release has been arranged for the pair. And that’s where “Sing Her Down” gets legs, and we realize that Pochoda owns us until she lets us go.   

The story is rather simple: they’re deposited from the prison in a rundown motel for two weeks until their parole officer can interview them, find the tender spots to poke and scabs to pick, and line them up for menial jobs. 

Florida calls her new parole officer to ask if she might transfer her supervision to California, and she is laughed at. Dios fumes over the treatment they’re getting and jams their few belongings into a prison-issued trash bag, and the two catch a bus to L.A.  

Florida wants rid of the unpredictably violent Dios and to get home to her longed-for Jaguar convertible, and finagles her getaway over a bus change. 

This isn’t a book made for movie offers. We read it for the writer’s virtuosity characterizing these two women and the impediments they run into in their L.A. wanderings. 

There aren’t too many writers like Pochoda, just like you can’t find too many Miles Davises or Robert De Niros or Nolan Ryans. Of the hundreds of crime fiction books I have read and recommended over the years, I can vividly remember only a dozen or maybe 20.

I won’t forget Ivy Pochoda and “Sing Her Down.” And I won’t forget the Israeli writer Ayelet Gundar-Goshen and her unforgettable “Waking Lions” followed by “The Liar” that I marveled at and reviewed in these pages. And I’m excited to say that we’ll take a look at Ayelet’s new book in August, “The Wolf Hunt.”

You don’t need or want to know any more about Pochoda’s “Sing Her Down.” It’s not about the story; it’s about Ivy; it’s about the writing; it’s about what every fiction should be, but can’t.

Don’t forget to ask Maria’s Bookshop for your 15% “Murder Ink” discount, or don’t – the book is worth twice the price.