With Her Fists by Henry Roi

With Her Fists by Henry Roi

Genre: Crime Thriller

Publisher: Independently published

Publication Date: November 25, 2019

Clarice “Shocker” Ares retired from a sensational pro-boxing career to focus on her family and growing mechanic business.

In an instant, everything she has worked for is shattered, when the police find a shipment of drugs in their shop, and wrongfully send Clarice and her husband to prison. Incarcerated and desperate after court appeals are denied, Clarice must become the Shocker once more, challenging rival convicts in a deadly prison fight ring to finance her escape.

Battling alongside her, armed with his brilliant electronics wizardry, Clarice’s husband Ace manipulates the court system to arrange a daring prison break. When their abilities are put to the ultimate test, will they be able to exact their revenge – and regain freedom?

My thoughts

Thanks to the author for a copy of With Her Fists in exchange for an honest review. 

Before you pick up this book, brace yourself. It’s a gritty and wild thriller. Roi takes us into the violent world of prisons and drug cartels, corrupt police and sadistic prison guards and aggressive ex-boxers with nothing (and everything) to lose. It gets violent. Pack your bullet-resistant and stab-proof vest just in case. And stay alert. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of Clarice Ares’s fists.

Clarice is unrelentingly aggressive, sometimes at her own expense. There’s a reason her nickname was “The Shocker”: dealing with her is akin to a shock from an electrical outlet. Sometimes I wanted to shove a bottle of Valium down her throat and say calm down, girl.

Of all the characters, though, my favorite was El Maestro, the Mexican businessman/cartel kingpin. (Take your pick). Despite his softer side, it’s clear that he’ll go to great lengths to avenge the death of a friend. He’ll go to equally long lengths to correct injustice.

Roi is good at showing the structure of the prison hierarchy. The guards. A sadistic “Emergency Response Team.” Various gangs, all with their own power structures. And the people who end up alone and brutalized.

This hierarchy makes it possible for the strong to abuse the weak, often in humiliating ways. At one point, Clarice thinks about a woman stripped naked in front of her peers by the ERT, with her property torn up. The guards give the same treatment to any who protest this degradation. And this is supposed to be justice?

It’s no wonder that some prisoners choose to stay drugged up on various anti-psychotic meds or weed or soap operas. Reality isn’t safe.

It’s clear that Roi knows the boxing world. There are plenty of details about fights, warm-ups, and practices that only someone who’s lived in this world would know. (Or someone who’s done a lot of research.) This gives us the inside scoop on a world I know nothing about (and hope I never know from first hand experience. I’m not that tough!)

Some parts became repetitive, such as the many times Clarice fights or prepares for a fight while in prison. I’m not a boxer, nor did I find this the most compelling aspect of the story. But to be honest, most fictional action scenes leave me simultaneously confused (who is where in relation to whom and what the heck did they just DO?) and impatient (can we get back to the touchy-feely personal stuff now?) So that’s a me-issue! But it did make certain parts difficult to get through, unfortunately.

I also found it curious that Clarice doesn’t think about her son very much while in prison. She thinks about him a bit at first when her parents visit, and then during her escape; but she seems to spend much of the time ignoring her son’s existence. This may be a defense against pain, but it didn’t feel real to me.

Sometimes the tone was a bit uneven, and the sexual banter between Clarice and Ace didn’t work for me, either. (It rarely does in novels. Again, a me-issue.) I also never warmed to Ace, the hacker-turned-prisoner-turned-hacker-again.

Still, though, I really appreciated Roi’s exploration of crime and prisons.

There’s an underlying thread about justice and injustice running through this book. The line between the two isn’t always clear. Nor is the difference between corruption and virtue always clear-cut. Is it wrong for Clarice and Ace to lie, steal, or cheat a system as they make their escape? Is justice always served with a prison sentence or can illegal activities be a form of justice, too? The questions haunt the book.

This thriller would be a good pick for anyone who likes prison stories/prison escape stories.

Does this book interest you? Buy it here!

You can purchase With Her Fists by Henry Roi through this Amazon link.

About the author

Don’t forget that the Orenda Books giveaway for Mexico Street by Simone Buchholz is still going on. But it ends Wednesday, March 18, 2020 at midnight CDT, so be sure to enter the drawing before then!