Product Description

While investigating the apparent suicide of a beautiful college student with a double life, detective John Blake finds his own life in danger when he makes a startling discovery that could blow the lid off New York City's sex trade.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104314 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780843957730
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. 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. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Richard Aleas is the pseudonym of Charles Ardai, Hard Case Crime's publisher, but this is no vanity effort. And while he's obviously a fan of pulp paperbacks—from the words on the page to the girls on the covers—this is no mere mimickry, either: his boy-faced sleuth, John Blake (first seen in Little Girl Lost, 2004), brings the radio-age gumshoe into the Internet era without missing a step. In Songs of Innocence, the Internet is nothing less than the new boulevard of broken dreams. Blake has a knack for attracting "birds with broken wings"; his attempt to prove that his best friend, the beautiful and melancholy Dorrie Burke, didn't kill herself leads him deep into a seedy world of massage-table prostitutes who advertise by creating fake identities online. Some readers might want a bit more action and a bit less soul-searching, but with a sleuth named after a mystical, romantic poet, should we expect anything less? The truly noir ending leaves us guessing whether Blake will be back for Songs of Experience, but here's hoping. Graff, Keir

Customer Reviews

The last page saves this book
I read Aleas' two books back to back. I really enjoyed Little Girl Lost, his first, and then was more than mildly disappointed by 'Songs of Innocence.' First of all, the whole story is awkwardly conceived. To fully understand what I am talking about you will have to have read both of the books. If you have, you cant help but notice that Aleas pretty much lifts the plot from his first story and re-uses it here. John Blake's love is found dead by himself and he tries to find out who killed her. Not only has this sap now had two of his women knocked off, but its left up to him to uncover what happened because no one else will give a damn. Coincidentally, both of his girl friends also led shady lives as adult entertainment practitioners. This fact brings Blake into contact with a host of dirty underworld figures.

Too much happenstance occurs here. Blake does not often detect, but events just happen to fall into his lap. The entire plot is crudely pieced together. The saving graces here are (A) the writing, and (B) the ending. Aleas is a gifted enough writer to stick around for as long as he wants. His stories are rich in mood and atmosphere. The ending is of the 'Dog Eat Dog' variety, unexpected and shockingly satisfying.

I hope that Aleas continues to try his hand at fictional writing. I look forwards to following his development as an author. However I would say that you would be better off staying away from this book. This is no where near as fun to read as 'Little Girl Lost' and the only reason I am bumping it up to three stars is the very good end.

An stunning achievement
Three years after private investigator John Blake solved the murder of his one-time ex-girlfriend-turned-stripper, he has retired from the business -- it simply took too much out of him. But when his close friend Dorrie Burke is found dead in her bathtub with a copy of Final Exit, and the police automatically rule it a suicide, Blake knows it must be murder. Because they had told each other that, if either felt that low, he or she would call the other and they would work through it together.

But when Dorrie's mother tries to hire him to find her daughter's killer, he refuses because he doesn't do that any more. Well, at least not for pay, as we soon find out when Blake throws himself into the New York underworld with the dedication and dumb courage of a man with nothing left to lose.

Reportedly, it took author Richard Aleas (an anagrammatic pseudonym of recent Edgar Allan Poe Award-winner, Charles Ardai) two months to write the first John Blake mystery, Little Girl Lost, and three years to complete its sequel, Songs of Innocence. (Incidentally, both are named after individual works by the main character's namesake, poet William Blake.)

Aleas's first novel was also one of the first released by then-upstart publisher Hard Case Crime (co-founded by Ardai). It didn't win the awards garnered by some of its fellows (though it was nominated for several), but it has stood the test of time better than most, and is now remembered as one of the best because, in addition to terrifically recapturing the detective novels of the past, it also embraces the present.

And it has something that others were missing -- a heart. Despite its flaws, Little Girl Lost was a fantastic read, and its deeply emotional center is what I believe has made it still the favorite of many of the publisher's multitude of dedicated followers. I really enjoyed it, too. It was a solid first novel (with a real grabber of an opening chapter), but it remained very much a debut work, with all the influences and framework still evident. But, even if you thought it was the best book you had ever read (and many did), you would have no basis for thinking that Songs of Innocence would be exponentially better.

But with this book, Aleas has really come into his own. Songs of Innocence has deeper characterizations, a more complex plot, an even more involving storyline, a darker tone, and a much greater feeling of originality, especially in the multi-layered way Aleas sets up the story. Top all this off with a completely unexpected shocker of an ending that will emotionally devastate those readers who allow themselves to get swept up by this wholly remarkable story, and the difference between the two books is huge -- it's like comparing the work of a first-year architecture student to that of Frank Lloyd Wright. It's a stunning achievement, and Aleas will be hard pressed to follow it up with an even better work -- but I'd love to watch him try.

Not an admirer, sorry
The Hard Case Crime line has been a great gift for the hb field, so it feels more than a little churlish to crack on Mr. Ardai's own efforts, but I didn't like either this one or its immediate predecessor, LITTLE GIRL LOST.

The plot is gimcracked together and the big reveal reminded me alot of the big reveal in Spider Robinson's classic SF short story "God is an Iron", although I think Robinson handled it better. I could live with that -- what "Aleas" gets praised for, though, is I think the biggest problem. I didn't care much for the writing.

In particular, this feels to me like "James Lee Burke disease", ie an ambitious but wrongheaded attempt to impose poetry on the material. Underneath it's rough setting and (nicely done, to be fair about it) downbeat finale, this is as melodramatic as all get-out. I mean, really. Hookers with hearts of gold? An essentially callow youth as her protector/avenger? Impassioned noirish poetry spouted at convenient moments? I found it difficult to take seriously.

That's not to say very melodramatic scenarios don't work in hb fiction, obviously they do. But all this hysteria doesn't seem organic to the story, in a way that it usually does in Spillane, say. It seems tacked on, almost as though the story is an excuse for the emoting.

Nice cover, though.