A Faust To Be Reckoned With

Faust isn't your typical author. Brought up in the mean streets of Hell's Kitchen in New York City, she has made the transition from peep-show girl to dominatrix to author, and has been described in America as the 'First Lady of hard case crime'.

"Why do I have to be the First Lady though – why do I have to be someone's wife?" she says, tucking into a roast beef dinner during a snatched break at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. The author who bestowed this title upon her happens to be her favourite crime author (and, incidentally, is the writer she would choose to be president to her First Lady) – Richard Prather.

Faust is adamant she never thought of using a pseudonym or initials for her author name like so many other female authors in the genre choose to do – "not in a million years. My novels are female. They may be tough, they may be about crime, but they're ultimately about female issues."

Addressing the barriers that female crime writers face, she says: "Female readers read male authors. Very few male readers read female authors." Faust cites British crime writer Cathy Unsworth as one of her favourites: "she's sharp and brilliant and cuts right to the issues. For me, reading her is like a total blank slate - I might as well be reading about anywhere, because I know very little about British history and politics, but she has such a strong sense of place; she puts you on the streets with the characters."

Faust grew up in a rough neighbourhood a few blocks south of Times Square in New York City, where she worked as a peep show girl in the Eighties while still at school. Her upbringing provided material for her writing: "there was a lot of crime – we were broken into a lot and you'd get prostitutes all over the place. But I never felt deprived, that was just my neighbourhood. It's like if you live in Africa – you know there are lions there, you just stay out of their way."

She describes her novels as 'hard-boiled crime', and isn't afraid to write about sex. "People are afraid to include sex in books, but the way that people have sex is the best way to work out their character. It's like watching people eat: everyone does it differently, and it can tell you a lot about a person."

Her new novel, Chokehold, follows Angel, the heroine of her debut novel Money Shot, as her life entangles with that of a MMA fighter. "I'm fascinated by men fighting," she admits, "Daddy doesn't love his little boy enough, so he becomes a fighter. It's the ultimate expression of masculinity." Her research included shadowing an 18-year-old fighter for two months: "I get topic crushes; I'm a lifestyle perve. I learn about one thing and I can't get enough."

This First Lady is certainly earning her stars and stripes in the crime fiction world.