Little Girl Lost by Richard Aleas

Preface:

Richard Aleas is a pseudonym for Charles Ardai. Ardai is the creator and publisher of the Hard Case Crime imprint. I think way back in my early days of discovering the books in this imprint that this one was about #7 in my reading. 

 

 

 

Little Girl Lost by Richard Aleas (pub. 2004):

John Blake has a problem.

He had a girlfriend (or at least a one-night stand that he thought was a girlfriend) named Miranda Sugarman, a girl he knew from high school.  They parted ways 10 years ago, mainly because she was moving on to better things. She had planned to go to college to become a doctor. She was a very smart girl.

But she ended up being murdered. Not only that, she had been in town for years and he didn't even know she had come back. But the worst part of it was the headline above her old high school yearbook picture that said "Stripper Murdered". This is what is bugging John more than anything else.  Not just that she had abandoned her dream of being a doctor but that she had turned to stripping to pay the bills. And not in some high class strip club, but a two bit dive that was way down on the totem pole from what John would have thought she was capable of if she had resorted to stripping...

Fortunately John had made his career as a private detective, so he knows how to poke around and get at the nitty gritty behind this baffling change of direction that Miranda had taken. The first thing he discovers is that Miranda's mom had died. Well, that explains why she could no longer afford to go to med school. But what were the circumstances that led to the seemingly dire situation of stripping for The Sin Factory, a low-rent excuse of an operation?

Over the course of his investigation, Blake, who is warned not only by his boss and partner in the P.I. business he works,Leo,  but also by the operator of the nightclub, Lenz, and even the ultimate owners of the seedy strip joint. lay off, just let it go. But Blake is not about to let any verbal threats deter him or, for that matter. a couple of run-ins with beefy muscle-brained hoodlums. 

Along the way Blake acquires a helper of sorts in the form of a stripper who used to work with Miranda. She helps Blake look for a mysterious fellow stripper that Miranda had been a co-worker and lover. As time progresses through the book, the various people that Blake thinks are his primary suspects in the crime keep being taken out of the picture as far as his suspicions are concerned. In fact, the ultimate murderer is someone that would probably have been the last person to enter his mind as a potential suspect.

As far as the film noir concept I gave this imprint at the outset, so far this is the one that really comes close to that theme. The obsession that Blake exhibits in trying to get to the bottom of Miranda's descent and ultimate death hint at some of those great movies I saw back in the early 80's when I discovered film noir as a theme.  

Quiggy's Rating: 8.5 stars

Happy reading.

Quiggy