Songs of Innocence

I started out liking this book but gradually began to like it less. I love hard-boiled crime stories but the fact that this had a contemporary setting made it too real. Most crime fiction I've read is set in the 30's or 40's and so has enough distance to take some of the edge off and make it enjoyable to read. Hard-boiled in a contemporary setting is too hard. Then there is the really nasty ending. I won't be reading anything else by this author because of it. This detective is no Philip Marlowe.

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.

Richard Aleas's "Songs of Innocence" brings the PI into the 21st Century, complete with cell phones, computers, and e-mail. The author explains how a PI seeks, finds, and uses information to come to a logical conclusion. The book is as dark as they get. And makes you want more "Aleas."

A first-rate, stand-out noir novel featuring a sensitive and self-destructive PI protagonist on the hunt for the killer of his close friend. Aleas (pen name for HCC founder/editor Charles Ardai) returns with a sequel to his terrific LITTLE GIRL LOST and provides us with a fully realized hero willing to gamble his life away so long as he completes his mission of trackinga murderer. Aleas takes advantage of the New York setting to create a powerful atmosphere of urban beauty, intellect, crime, and terror. As in the noir novels of old, which Hard Case Crime thankfully reprints, mood is key, and there's plenty to spare here. Tense, taut, nihilistic, dark, and wholly readable, SONGS OF INNOCENCE needs to be on the shelf of every noir/crime fan. Highly recommended.

This is a five-star stunner--great characters, fully-realized setting, and a jackhammer plot. The ethos is as dark as the alleyways in the Bowery and Morningside Heights. There are some odd lapses--a character pulling a cardigan sweater over his head,e.g., and securing money from an ATM with another person's card (no password needed?), but these are minor warts in a giant of a noir novel. One very simple scene involving the protagonist's 3-foot step/leap between NY buildings, with a 60' drop in between is almost unreadable because of the tension and the ending is unexpected, but fully prepared-for. It comes like a 2x4 across the nose or a ball peen hammer to the forehead. Buy this book.

This latest offering from Hard Case Crime is one of the best in the series so far. Unlike many of the Hard Case Crime stories, "Songs of Innocence" is a modern story, not a reprint or lost edition of a story from the 50's or 60's. The current day setting is a welcome change. Rather than chain smoking, scotch and broads you get cell phones, lap tops and Korean massage parlors. That aside, the story is as good as any in the series. The action is fast paced and violent, with the underground sex scene thrown in for good measure. The body count keeps rising right to the very end and I think the ending will astound most every reader.