4.5 Stars

Much like “The Best Bad Things,” this sequel/companion is thrilling, suspenseful, action-packed, unbelievably gender-fucky and so much fun to read.

Katrina Carrasco is so good at finding a compelling B Plot to really propel the story forward while also heightening the stakes. In the first book, she breaks up the chapters with this police transcript of an ongoing interrogation, and that draws the reader in that much more because, in a way, they know the end result, but they don’t know how the chips fell the way they did. And even with all the cards seemingly on the table, there’s still room for surprises.

In this book, rather than play with structure, she introduces this secondary character working to uncover how far this illegal drug smuggling ring goes. He exists as a kind of foil for Alma, but interestingly enough, as he’s going undercover to try and bust this operation open from the inside, he’s also discovering his own queerness. I really loved that storyline, because it not only echoes Alma’s own experiences of stepping into her power and her identity as Jack—who was supposed to be just a cover for one of her jobs—but it also complicates everyone’s positions, because now emotions are dirtying some already seriously criminal business.

And thematically—again, much like the first book—the story does such a great job of exploring all the ways we seek out and exchange power in our day-to-day lives. Power can be gained, it can be given, it can be taken, it can be discovered, it can be exercised over other people, and the story intimately understands all of those nuances.

There’s a lot to chew on in this book and it’s also entertaining as hell.

I will say, this book was so close to being five stars for me, but it does sort of lose steam towards the very end. It’s building up to what seems like an explosive breaking point that kind of ends up being swept under the rug so everything can wrap up quickly and neatly. If it was maybe 30-50 pages longer it would have been perfect. But I still highly recommend both books, and I hope this is not the last we see of Jack Camp!

Sorry for the late review!

ROUGH TRADE is a thrilling sorta sequel to Carrasco's previous novel. Like Anna North's OUTLAWED, we have a queer account of the Western, with outlaws here in the opium business. It's a historical novel, rich in how it tackles the material. Exceptional work.

Thanks to the publisher for the e-galley.

In Rough Trade, Ben Collins, an Oregonian newspaper reporter for the Portland Sentinel, part of the William Randolph Hearst syndicate, travels up to Tacoma to investigate opium trafficking. It’s 1888, and the growing port city is tough and loose, a world of possibilities for enterprising young men. Going undercover, Ben reinvents himself as Benjamin Velasquez, an itinerant laborer. Having left his wife and children behind in Portland, he cruises the saloons in Tacoma and picks up a male lover—one who happens to belong to a ring of criminals transferring “tar” (opium) from the shipyard to the railyard.

Ben—as Velasquez—must contend with Jack Camp, whose team of smuggling stevedores he sets out to join. The clean-shaven Camp is short, smart, and violent, an imposing presence on the wharves, feared and respected by all the other dockworkers. Camp is also an act—a performance by Alma Rosales, a Mexican American former officer of the law who has also reinvented herself in the Pacific Northwest. Alma was trained at the “Women’s Bureau for Pinkerton Detectives” in Chicago, but when the Pinkertons shut down the office, she took her professional skills and refashioned them for a life of crime. “William Pinkerton and his brother didn’t have a lick of sense when they disbanded the Women’s Bureau. They trained a group of women to know what makes a perfect criminal, a perfect crime, and then kicked all those women off the payroll and into the street.” Now Alma is helping to run the busiest cell of an opium smuggling ring.

The dynamic between Alma and Ben makes for an exciting story. Will Ben discover the proof he needs that Alma is smuggling “tar” through the port? Will Alma discover Ben’s real identity? Will the long arm of the law finally dismantle the profitable opium trade in Tacoma? Rough Trade is a sequel to Carrasco’s debut novel, The Best Bad Things (2022), which also featured Alma Rosales, but it’s a sequel that can pleasurably be read on its own.

The plot of Rough Trade hinges upon such criminal investigations, but what animates the characters and provides much of the book’s momentum are same-sex attractions. Nearly every character has what today’s readers might call a queer dimension; the novel clearly works against modern heteronormativity. Ben falls in love with Adriel, a young stevedore. Alma is torn between Delphine, her socially elite partner in crime, and Bess, an old flame from her Pinkerton days who mysteriously blows into town.

The effect can come across as a bit gimmicky: it’s the LGBTQ Wild West. (The book cover calls it a “genre- and gender-blurring novel.”) But Carrasco’s approach is ultimately much more thoughtful than that. Her focus isn’t merely on sexual desire but on the physicality of the bodies of her characters. No one ever suspects that Jack Camp is a woman with a tight binding cloth wrapped around her chest, and her disguise is ultimately more liberating than restricting: “Despite all the ways it grips and hides her, it lets her move freely, too.”

When Ben first tries to pass himself off as a dockworker, he gets caught almost immediately—not because he fumbles the details of his story but because he doesn’t have the body of a longshoreman. A sailor simply points to Ben’s fingers, clearly not those of a manual laborer, and Ben realizes he needs more than the right words. “In the real world, he’s learning, fictions can’t be merely a thing of the mind. The body tells a story. His body—the soft hands, the pale skin of his face, bleached to its milky whitest by the Portland gloom and days spent holed up in the newsroom—speaks for him.” This notion—that the body tells a story—leads to a much more visceral, corporal set of characters than one might expect.

Alma Rosales is a terrific character that stays with the reader long after the book is closed. But for all the different identities on display here, the most compelling may be that of Tacoma itself, still a part of the Washington Territory. The 1888 setting catches the burgeoning city at a turning point, having just become the western terminus for the Northern Pacific Railroad’s new transcontinental line. The rickety wharves of Old Tacoma have just been joined to the railway station of New Tacoma, two miles away, and the metropolitan synthesis has created a formidable zone of development. In the decade of the 1880s, the population exploded from just over 1,000 to a whopping 36,000. Carrasco targets this moment of transformation. “So much of Tacoma still feels small-town bad,” she writes. “It’s not San Francisco.” The action in the novel almost never travels inland, remaining instead firmly on the waterfront, in a world of “stevedores and roustabouts.”

It rains a lot there. (Still does.) The weather necessitates coats and caps and generally drives people inside, into the smoky bars and backrooms. In the dim light, anything can happen—and anyone can become anybody. “Liquor flows and bowls of opium dribble smoke. The lamps are kept low. Skirts and trousers don’t necessarily signify. It’s wonderfully confusing.” Late-1880s Tacoma is a rough and tumble town, where everyone who can read sticks to the Police Gazette. Bending the rules is the norm here, and Alma is completely at home. “She and her boys can get up to all sorts of no good in Old Tacoma.”

The setting provides a lot of fun, though occasionally Carrasco’s dialogue features a missed note when the speakers suddenly adopt contemporary idioms. “It’s been a minute since we spent some time,” Alma says to Delphine at one point. But overall, the story is fast paced and exciting, a page-turner that keeps its fists up and swinging.

In this latest book by Carrasco, opium smuggler Alma is making a killing in the Western Territory, 1888. She and her crew move their product during the day and spend their nights at Monte Carlo, the center of the queer scene in Tacoma. Once two local men end up dead, the lawmen come sniffing around. As Alma tries to keep them away from her operation, her old love, Bess Spencer, shows up. Bess is ex Pinkerton. Meanwhile, another newbie shows up, starts an affair with one of Alma’s workers and starts asking questions. Is there a spy in her ring?

I picked this one up because I enjoyed The Best Bad Things. I didn’t enjoy it as much, but it was a well-crafted story with rich characters and a plot that kept twisting and turning. It’s a queer historical fiction with a mystery at its heart. Representation on both sides of the gender spectrum in terms of queer relationships, and the story moves pretty quickly. Overall, not for me but a good read, nonetheless.

4.25 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and MCD for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this story! I did not read the first story, not knowing there was one, but it was very easy to follow and it felt like I was given a good deal of information about Alma/Jack. I did not feel confused or wonder how things fit into the story.

There was so much tension with the murder mystery and drug trade in this book! I had no idea how everything would turn out, and I wanted to continue reading to figure out what the conclusion was. There was also a ton of sexual tension between the characters, which felt so palpable! I really enjoyed all of the queer representation, especially getting both Alma’s POV and Ben’s. Alma was a badass and I could’ve continued reading her POV! I’m interested in picking up the first book now!

CW: blood, violence, murder, drug use, sexual content, homophobia, drug trafficking, death, injury/injury detail

I am so thankful to MCD, Katrina Carrasco, and Netgalley for granting me advanced digital access to this book before it hits shelves on April 9, 2024. I was captivated by the narrative and couldn't get enough.

Gritty and dark, this novel follows two main perspectives through a drug-riddled world. Queer and gripping, this novel will keep readers on the edge of their seats!

This series is so good and I"m glad I waited several years for the next installment. Alma/Camp is such a compelling character, and her antihero status is so engaging. I would read any installment in this series.

i didnt read the first one so this one was a bit of a struggle for me. i wasn't aware it was a follow up to a previous novel. i may need to read the first one before giving this one another chance, but for now it's a DNF for me

This was a bit tough for me, because it takes place in a historical time/setting that I knew nothing about and had no frame of reference for. I prefer to read historical fiction that's either completely made up (usually fantasy related tbh), but this one's summary really intrigued me so I requested it. I struggled a bit with keeping myself invested while reading, which isn't a critique of the writing or author because I've loved the previous book I've read by Katrina Carrasco and didn't have the same issue. Will definitely pick up more in the future but I just don't think one really did it for me.