Songs of Innocence

Starred review from May 21, 2007
Aleas, the pen name for Hard Case Crime founder Charles Ardai, solidifies his reputation as one of the finer modern hard-boiled writers with his second John Blake novel (following 2004's Little Girl Lost
). Blake, a young but already deeply scarred detective, has given up PI work—his last case cost him the life of his lover, and almost that of a dear friend, so Blake has taken a sedate job as an administrative assistant at Columbia University, where he's enrolled in a creative writing class. When a classmate and confidant, Dorothy Burke, dies in her bathtub, the police take one look at the plastic bag over her head and the copy of Final Exit
nearby, and declare it a suicide. Dorothy's mother has other ideas and ropes Blake back into his old trade to pursue her suspicions that Dorothy was murdered. Before she died, Dorothy let Blake in on her secret life as a prostitute—information the police don't have—and he pursues that lead deep into New York City's violent underworld. Throughout, Aleas effortlessly channels the spirit of the pulps with crisp prose and an unrelentingly grim plot line, and his powerful conclusion will drop jaws.