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duparker's review
4.0
Great story and style. I really enjoyed the drama and the smokiness of the story. There was a clear understanding of the drama and the methodology of the crime. There was no over done grit to it, and no false sense of myth to the thrill of a crime, either.
amichaelbraun's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
dee9401's review against another edition
1.0
Since I should say something nice, this book made me want to have a cuppa hazelnut coffee.
misterjay's review
4.0
Every good private detective has two first cases - the one that makes him want to be a P.I. and the one that makes him want to stop. This story is the latter case for John Blake and with good reason. When his first love turns up dead at a seedy stripclub, Blake takes the case not so much because he wants to but because he has to. His conscience won't let him do otherwise.
Like all the Hard Case Crimes books, Little Girl Lost is fast and quickly paced. Things move along in the direction you expect, right up until you reach the twist, which we've also come to expect. All in all, a solid read that's easy to start.
Like all the Hard Case Crimes books, Little Girl Lost is fast and quickly paced. Things move along in the direction you expect, right up until you reach the twist, which we've also come to expect. All in all, a solid read that's easy to start.
dantastic's review
4.0
P.I. John Blake's childhood girlfriend, Miranda Sugarman, is found dead on top of a strip club. John follows her backtrail from her enrollment in medical school to a relationship with another woman, to a career touring the strip club circuit and a million dollar robbery. Only, things aren't as they seem at first glance.
I hate to admit it since I was prepared to write off Richard Aleas/Charles Ardai as a phony before I read his stuff but the man knows how to turn out a paperback original. The story had plenty of twists and turns and I only figured out what was really going on a few pages ahead of Blake. Great stuff.
I hate to admit it since I was prepared to write off Richard Aleas/Charles Ardai as a phony before I read his stuff but the man knows how to turn out a paperback original. The story had plenty of twists and turns and I only figured out what was really going on a few pages ahead of Blake. Great stuff.
glimnore's review
5.0
Pardon my language, but Little Girl Lost by Richard Aleas was 'unexpectedly fucking brilliant.'
Quick and easy prose frames this slow-burn, hard-boiled detective novel. What surprised me the most was that LGL manages to pay homage to older classical works while simultaneously innovating on traditional tropes often seen within the genre.
Wrapped up in pulpy goodness, Aleas' staging and plotting help accelerate the novel to its stone-cold ending. And I can't help but find myself simply clamoring for more.
Fortunately, there is a sequel! Onward!
Quick and easy prose frames this slow-burn, hard-boiled detective novel. What surprised me the most was that LGL manages to pay homage to older classical works while simultaneously innovating on traditional tropes often seen within the genre.
Wrapped up in pulpy goodness, Aleas' staging and plotting help accelerate the novel to its stone-cold ending. And I can't help but find myself simply clamoring for more.
Fortunately, there is a sequel! Onward!
twilliamson's review
4.0
Little Girl Lost, published in 2004 by Charles Ardai under his pseudonym, is a great novel. It has all the seediness of a proper pulp detective novel, but also blends in a more modern sensibility of character drama and narrative flair. In fact, the book has some beautifully written sequences relying as much on a readerly sense of nostalgia for a past unrecoverable as it does on the suspenseful plot common to detective novels.
The plot, though, is probably the book's weakest area, as it feels like Ardai only introduces information about the setting when it becomes convenient to the book, and so much of the narrator's constant figuring and "detecting" seems to serve to hide the fact that the "twist" of the novel is so utterly predictable.
The book's sexual politics, though, are at least fairly interesting; there's a femme fatale and a male detective, and yet much of the book illustrates just how fragile the male detective is (emotionally and physically) and how powerful the femme fatale can be. This is not to say that the book is some feminist masterpiece; on the contrary, the novel's overarching structure reiterates traditional gender roles, but its complications are at least welcome in a genre dominated by rigid gender archetypes.
It's really the narrative "flashbacks," though, that I find most compelling through the novel, and the noir craftsmanship is worth the read. It's a fine read, and another great addition to the Hard Case Crime print.
The plot, though, is probably the book's weakest area, as it feels like Ardai only introduces information about the setting when it becomes convenient to the book, and so much of the narrator's constant figuring and "detecting" seems to serve to hide the fact that the "twist" of the novel is so utterly predictable.
The book's sexual politics, though, are at least fairly interesting; there's a femme fatale and a male detective, and yet much of the book illustrates just how fragile the male detective is (emotionally and physically) and how powerful the femme fatale can be. This is not to say that the book is some feminist masterpiece; on the contrary, the novel's overarching structure reiterates traditional gender roles, but its complications are at least welcome in a genre dominated by rigid gender archetypes.
It's really the narrative "flashbacks," though, that I find most compelling through the novel, and the noir craftsmanship is worth the read. It's a fine read, and another great addition to the Hard Case Crime print.
haf59's review
4.0
Well-written, gripping, brutal mystery. Strippers, drugs, betrayal, NYC, memories. Private detective. Innocence lost. Really pretty damn good. Can't say how mysterious the mystery is in the end, but ... it's a good read. And a very nice cover, too.
kurtwombat's review
3.0
I have wanted to try a selection from the HARD CASE CRIME pulp novel series for most of the decade that they have been around. For the uninitiated, this imprint created in 2004 prints new (including the most recent entry by Stephen King) and reprints classic examples of crime thrillers ( so far including Lawrence Block, Earl Stanley Gardner, Donald Westlake, Ed McBain & Harlan Ellison. My first foray into the series was LITTLE GIRL LOST by Richard Aleas who created the imprint. The story moves well and is fairly well populated with interesting characters. The main character is of course a detective but unlike most novels of this genre where virtually everyone is world weary, Aleas’ PI John Blake is still wet behind the ears. His lack of experience is why he takes on a case that more than likely will just lead to heartache. His relative youth allows for the reader and the detective to learn certain life lessons together as the plot unspools. This was played with at first but was not followed up with very successfully the rest of the way. The plot has sufficient twists and turns to keep the pages turning but about half way through I knew who the killer was. Was kinda waiting around to see how the situation would be wrapped up. Some similarity to a classic, THE MALTESE FALCON. On the whole it was a solid read but it wasn’t always the story that drew me back. Sometimes it was just the feel of the book and the lurid quality to the cover. The HARD CASE CRIME series creates original pulp inspired art for the covers…art work that I relish. Even the shape of the book seems smaller on the whole than other paperbacks…a reminder of the basic blue collar ready to discard nature of the books the series wishes to emulate. I will be collecting new covers.