reviewed by Brian Cain

Little Girl Lost, one of the new titles from Hard Case Crime, seems like a generic hard-boiled potboiler if you read the back cover blurb: a PI’s old girlfriend is found murdered, and the PI must find the killer. He’ll face tough bad guys and big obstacles and the usual harbinger of doom is thrown in for good measure. I hereby call for a revolution in the back cover blurb writing industry, because such a description doesn’t do the book justice. If you pass on buying the novel because of it, you’re going to miss out on one of the freshest and most surprising private eye novels published in a long time.

John Blake, the hero of the story, is a 29-year-old rookie dick working for an agency run by his more experienced boss. One morning he reads a newspaper article about the death of Miranda Sugarman, a flame from high school. Her body was found on the roof of a New York City strip club, but she shouldn’t be there: Miranda left New York City after graduation to go to medical school. Blake, despite warnings from his boss, sets out to find out what went wrong in her life that led her back to NYC and one of the dingiest strip clubs in the city. Yes, he bumps into the aforementioned tough bad guys and the usual results follow (I believe Blake gets conked on the head at least twice – no self-respecting PI novel would be complete without moments of unconsciousness). But what makes Little Girl Lost so fresh is its young, inexperienced protagonist who isn’t necessarily ready for what he finds, along with a few surprising twists when you think you know what’s going to happen. The ending will blow you away with its Spillane-style sucker punch revelation. Blake isn’t Mike Hammer, ready to blast the bad guys in half with a hot .45, but he deals with his problems in a fashion sure to satisfy hard-boiled fans who think it’s all be done before.

My one complaint would be the strip club motif Aleas tosses in, including a "stripper with a heart of gold" character that helps Blake. Why anything X-rated has become a hard-boiled staple is beyond me (I guess it makes a story "gritty"), but Aleas (if that’s his real name) handles the scenes tastefully, and Blake’s assistant, Susan, is somebody you’ll want to root for.

There isn’t a lot of time devoted to characterization in Little Girl Lost, but Blake’s introspective moments are alone worth the price of admission. Blake comes of age, in a sense, and as he realizes the world can be an ugly place, we feel the same shock and disappointment he does. It makes the ending all the more surprising.

Little Girl Lost is a good example of taking classic hard-boiled elements and providing a fresh spin. If Aleas decides to continue with the Blake character, he could give us one of the best private eyes of this generation. Little Girl Lost belongs in your to-be-read stack, and should be grabbed post haste.

Copyright© 2004 Brian Cain

Read an extract from Brian Cain's Mine To Avenge

BRIAN CAIN, 28, lives in California where he pounds a news beat for TV and radio and uses the experience for story ideas (which makes up for the lousy pay). Several of his short stories have appeared in the Printed Poison web zine.
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