Synopsis
The author recounts her career with the LAPD, the corruption that caused her disillusionment, and her exploits as a glamorous call girl
Reviews
Those who thought they had seen the Los Angeles Police Department at its nadir on the Rodney King tape will revise their opinion after reading this shocking expose by a woman who joined the force in 1972 and left it 10 years later. Almodovar tells tales of drunkenness, extortion, theft, statutory rape and even murder by her ex-colleagues. And, when she left the force, she discovered a new dimension to police viciousness. According to Almodovar, she was criminally entrapped, not because of her new career as a $200-an-hour call girl, but because she had made known that she was writing a "tell all" book about her experiences as a police officer. She claims that she was set up by the LAPD on a charge of "pandering" and was imprisoned for 50 days for an offense usually punished by probation. Although Almodovar's story of her treatment by the police is convincing, her account is too long and at times tedious. Having withdrawn her $3 million lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles, the LAPD and various individual police officers for conspiracy to violate her civil rights, Almodovar now heads the Hollywood branch of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), a rights organization for prostitutes. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The title should read Cop to Call Girl to Confessor, since Almodovar--who quit the LAPD in 1982 in order to hook--has apparently given up the life in order to tell all ``and make millions of dollars.'' The money may be forthcoming--but critical raves likely won't. It's not that Almodovar doesn't have an interesting story to tell; it's that she tells it with a whine of aggrieved innocence- -and with little knack for organization or drama. Sexually abused as a child, she joined the LAPD in 1972 only to observe rampant police corruption (though not so rampant as to inspire her to quit, or to report the cops who were having sex with underage Explorer Scouts). Ten years later, a disabling accident impelled her to seek other work--prostitution: ``I could choose my own hours, see only men I liked, and go to the finest restaurants with my clients. And I loved sex. What more could I ask for?'' The author took to whoring with gusto, and, for all its X-rated luridness, the liveliest portion of her rambling, time-leaping narrative details her sessions with ``clients,'' such as the stockbroker for whom she posed as Julia Child cooking a chicken in the nude. But while Almodovar was hooking, she was also writing an expos‚ of the LAPD, with an emphasis on cops' sexual practices. It was her threat of such revelations, she claims, that in 1986 got her nailed on a charge of pandering (freed after several months, Almodovar broke probation--or so said the court; ``a blatant vendetta,'' she claimed at the time). Released for good in 1989, Almovodar finally finished her expos‚--this book--which also presents her poetry: ``Prithee tell me, my fair lass/How fares a cop in bed?/Does he sit you on your ass?/While he stands upon his head?'' T'is no pity she was a whore--but a writer she is not. (Photographs--not seen) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
This tawdry autobiography chronicles Almodovar's life from repressive childhood to a stint as a Los Angeles traffic cop to glamorous call girl. Supposedly written as an expose of corruption in the LAPD, this book instead reads like an extended kiss-and-tell letter to Penthouse , explicitly extolling the virtues of prostitution ("what horny woman wouldn't opt for such a lifestyle?"). Disillusioned by dishonesty in the police force, Almodovar embraced a life of prostitution and began work on a book about her life as a cop-turned-call girl. However, she claims that once the LAPD found out about the manuscript, they arrested her for pandering (a felony) to keep her quiet--and she served a three-year prison sentence. Unfortunately, what might have been a serious study of the moral and legal aspects of prostitution is undermined by Almodovar's seeming desire to imitate The Happy Hooker. Not recommended.
- Rebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Calumet Lib., Hammond, Ind.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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