Little Girl Lost

From AwardAnnals

Reviews

Barnes and Noble

When Dorchester Publishing’s new Hard Case Crime line launched in September 2004 (with Grifter’s Game by Lawrence Block and Fade to Blonde by Max Phillips), it promised readers “the best in hard-boiled crime fiction.” Hard Case Crime delivers another installment on that promise with an edgy, gripping and gritty modern noir: Little Girl Lost, a first novel by Richard Aleas.

Private investigator John Blake grew up in New York City, and he thought he’d pretty much seen it all. But he never expected to see Miranda Sugarman’s yearbook picture under the Daily News headline “Stripper Murdered.” Ten years ago, just before that dated photo had been taken, Miranda had been his first serious girlfriend. When they’d parted company right after high school, she’d had big plans for her future—including college and a career as an ophthalmologist. Now John needs to know how she ended up stripping in a sleazy New York club with a future as dead as her dreams. Her gruesome fate is the final blow that pushes John Blake to reopen that lost chapter in his past, to learn the truth about Miranda’s secret life and lay his conscience and his dead lover’s memory to rest. —Sue Stone