Madame Ricketts is the story of John Wesley, a reporter who is writing a book and is interviewing Maudie Rickets, who is now the elderly madam of the La Rosa Luna whorehouse located on the Mexican border.

Each chapter of this novel is a vignette or story that occurred during Maudie’s life, and when combined, the stories connect to make a sort of plot.

Unfortunately, the writing is quite amateurish, and some of the scenarios are quite juvenile. Much of the so-called humor is off-color and is reminiscent of 10 year old boys with little experience in sexual situations who would confide one with another. While John Wesley is the actual protagonist, Maudie Ricketts is the one that takes the spotlight.

Some of the characters are fairly interesting, but Hancock hasn’t done a good job of developing them – they seem made up and most readers won’t be able to relate. However, Maudie Ricketts is the most developed of the characters, and she is colorful and quite interesting. Wesley is boring. The supporting characters may spark some interest, but they seem more made up than real.

Hancock should have taken a class in writing a novel 101 before putting this together. There are some chapters that are interesting, but his attempt at dark humor falls flat, and much of the novel isn’t really that humorous as intended. Actually, the stories go so long, many readers will find they are suffering from boredom.

All told, while some of the chapters are interesting and tell of happenings from the turn of the century (the actual novel is set in the 50s and Maudie’s stories range from 1875) that could probably happen, much of the story is implausible due to the fact that most of the murders and mayhem described goes unpunished.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

Madam Ricketts tells the story of John Wesley, a second-generation newspaper reporter who is writing a book based on his late father’s writings and research.

I don't read a ton of true crime or nonfiction, but this was really good. Kept my attention the whole time and I learned a lot.

I had trouble getting into this one I found it jumped about a lot and there were so many characters that were introduced but not always clearly. It made it very confusing and sometimes I had no idea what was going on.