First, two teenagers posing as fund raising chocolate bar sellers kidnap Nicola. When she realizes the two are fairly inept, she figures either she is not the intended target, or someone dumber than her captives - like Scooter - is behind this. With this realization, and some kickboxing, she takes charge of the situation, but decides to keep Davette around for her computer skills and see what the teenager can dig up on Nicola’s smarmy landlord.

Paralleling Nicola’s captivity are scenes of a more disturbing nature as another young woman is held, raped and terrorized and ultimately killed. It doesn’t take much to figure out who is behind the attack and who is the preferred victim and how her landlord figures into all this. Predictably, Nicola, suffering from a bout of self-pitying ennui gets involved and has to put herself in danger to save one of her new friends and reenergize her own life.

While 12 Bliss Street has all the trappings of a hip, edgy noir thriller, it falls short with scenarios from unbelievable (teenage chocolate bar sellers have no change and have to get it from their mommy in the minivan near by?) to predictable (Nicola has just come from kick boxing class when she is abducted and she kick boxes her way out of the restraints). Nicola is a self-absorbed, self-involved heroine who is very hard to empathize with when she whines because she turns down a date with a strange man she just met and fears she will never have sex again.

The rape scene appears little more than gratuitous violence and the fact that Chorizo uses a strung out drug addict for the actual acts doesn’t make him seem an evil manipulator, but rather a lazy control freak. The rape scene does little to add to the suspense of the novel and seems unnecessary since it adds nothing to the plot or characterization of Chorizo. Stereotypical characters lead to an apathy that may cause readers to lose interest in the book early on.

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry