The Last Girl

May 29, 2017
A chance encounter in a bar leads to a new career for Dexter Vega, a recently laid-off investigative journalist at Florida’s Sarasota Herald, in the pseudonymous Lopez’s uneven debut. Dexter takes pity and offers a ride home to Nick Zavala, who’s dressed like a bum but turns out to live in a stylish house on the bay with a museumworthy art collection. Nick, who admires Dexter’s journalism work, tells his guest that his college-age daughter, Maya, has gone missing. Despite knowing nothing about Nick (and doing no subsequent research into the guy), Dexter agrees to find Maya. From a Siesta Key con man who was living with Maya, Dexter discovers that she’s in Mexico. Things get complicated when Nick is murdered; Dexter becomes a suspect, and he decides to go to Mexico City in search of answers. Dexter takes a few beatings and unearths a lot of unpleasant things about Nick on the way to the contrived resolution. Too many unlikely developments weaken the plot, but Lopez’s assured prose suggests he’s capable of better next time.

July 1, 2017
We know we're in noir-land immediately. The hole-in-the-wall bar is called Memories Lounge, the jukebox plays real 45s, and the ceiling is black from decades of cigarette smoke. A good place to seek oblivion if you're a noir hero, bitter and broke and waiting for a mission to bring redemption. That's Dexter Vega, just laid off from a reporter's job at a Sarasota newspaper. He rescues an old man from a beating and is offered a quest: search for the old man's missing daughter. Dexter finds her in Mexico. Her entire person seemed to glow like the sun. Or a promise of salvation. Her father, who perhaps isn't her father, is murdered. This is the setup for a tightly written, beautifully paced thriller that doesn't stop revealing its secrets until the final page. Kiddie porn plays a role, as does teen prostitution, and the nicely worked-out scenes play like good theater. Dexter, whose cynicism seemed sort of skin deep, finally opts out of noir-land. Hope was not extinct, he notes. But weand the glowing girlknew that. Good fun and, thankfully, without a bitter aftertaste.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)