Songs of Innocence is the second John Blake mystery by Charles Ardai / Richard Aleas. The first book, Little Girl Lost is a conventional crime mystery, while Songs of Innocence is a daring anti-mystery and character study.

John Blake is a character stuck in patterns of behavior, and at first one expects a similar plot arc to the first book. Blake's girlfriend's dead, Blake investigates, he gets tangled up in the criminal underworld of the sex trade, he gets beat up, he finds the killer...

There are plenty of suspects and surprising nonessential twists, such as the side plot of Julie and Kurland. Ardai dangles a few red herrings, especially for readers of the first book. In the end, the reader's entire understanding of events is upended and the action moves toward an unavoidable conclusion. To say more would be to ruin it.

Don't read this one out-of-order; start with Little Girl Lost. I think Songs of Innocence is the high point of the 40+ Hard Case Crime books I've read. ( )

Aleas gives new meaning to "noir." I mean that in a good way. Nonetheless, ya gotta wonder what the private detectives of the literary world would do without strippers and prostitutes--or at least the P.I.s in Hard Case Crime novels. ( )

This is the second John Blake novel to date, being the sequel to Little girl lost. I liked the first one better, but this one is good also.

The overall tone of the book is dreary with an emphasis on the seedy. Think Tolstoy meets Zappa, but without the humor. I'm not complaining; I happen to think that this is legitimate selling point for the book since a setting that includes these elements has a really good chance of spawning interesting characters, and sure enough, it does.

I think there's a chance that there will be yet another in the series, and I think it would be really interesting to see what Blake develops into. I don't normally root for sequels or series; the landfills are chock full of these things and for good reason, but in this case, Ardai/Aleas has a chance to take a genre character existential (sorry; college education) places one doesn't normally see.

Cover: I liked the cover. Cute girls with revolvers always carry the day. ( )

Two things about the Hard Case Crime series caught my eye--the covers and the fact that Stephen King liked and believed in the series enough to write a short novel for them.

Those two things drew me in, but what's kept me interesting in this series is the novels themselves.

Richard Aleas's "Little Girl Lost" was one of the original novels in this series that drew me in. (The series alternates between new noir fiction and reprints of old, out of publication noir classics). So, when I heard there was a follow-up novel featuring John Blake, I was eager to read it.

It's been three years since the events of "Little Girl Lost" and Blake has left behind the life of a detective. He's working on a degree in fiction writing at a local university. It's here he meets and befriends Dorothy Burke, who is better known as Cassandra, a high-priced call-girl for hire. The novel begins with the funeral for Dorrie, who has apparently taken her own life and follows Blake's obsessive quest to find out who really killed her. The quest leads him down a dark path as he discovers what led to Dorrie's death and what role he played in the events.

Along the way, Blake has run ins with the seamier side of society, including several message businesses and the mafia behind them. The story twists and turns along as Blake comes closer and closer to the truth as to why Dorrie died. Aleas does a good job of foreshadowing what killed Dorrie and while the revelation of what led to her death should be shocking, it's not as much as it could be. Once a certain character appears, it's fairly obvious to see where the story is going.

What is a twist of an ending is where solving the case leads Blake in the final pages of the novel.

"Songs of Innocence" is an interesting noir mystery, steeped in the fine tradition of noir. Blake is a new-century hard-boiled private investigator and the story told from his first-person perspective moves along at a good rate, rarely going down too blind an alley or losing the reader's attention. The solution to what killed Dorrie and why is fairly obvious once certain characters come onto the scene, but the ending is a memorable one that will haunt readers long after the final pages have been turned. A good, hard-boiled, adult noir mystery. ( )

http://rivkat.livejournal.com/164808.... ( )