City of Lost Girls

February 15, 2010
Shamus Award–winner Hughes stumbles in his fifth novel featuring Irish PI Ed Loy (after All the Dead Voices
). Instead of playing to his strengths, Irish society and politics (as he did in All the Dead Voices
), Hughes puts Loy on the track of a serial killer without offering anything new to the concept. Movie director Jack Donovan, who's filming in Dublin, hires Loy to identify the person behind some threatening letters, but the inquiry becomes much more complicated after two extras on the set go missing. These disappearances awaken unpleasant memories for Loy, who connects them with a series of similar events that occurred years earlier near another Donovan film shoot, making Donovan and some of his crew members obvious suspects. Clichéd sections from the killer's point-of-view and a contrived ending will leave series fans hoping this outing is an uncharacteristic lapse.