Scan barcode
A review by twilliamson
Little Girl Lost by Richard Aleas
4.0
Little Girl Lost, published in 2004 by Charles Ardai under his pseudonym, is a great novel. It has all the seediness of a proper pulp detective novel, but also blends in a more modern sensibility of character drama and narrative flair. In fact, the book has some beautifully written sequences relying as much on a readerly sense of nostalgia for a past unrecoverable as it does on the suspenseful plot common to detective novels.
The plot, though, is probably the book's weakest area, as it feels like Ardai only introduces information about the setting when it becomes convenient to the book, and so much of the narrator's constant figuring and "detecting" seems to serve to hide the fact that the "twist" of the novel is so utterly predictable.
The book's sexual politics, though, are at least fairly interesting; there's a femme fatale and a male detective, and yet much of the book illustrates just how fragile the male detective is (emotionally and physically) and how powerful the femme fatale can be. This is not to say that the book is some feminist masterpiece; on the contrary, the novel's overarching structure reiterates traditional gender roles, but its complications are at least welcome in a genre dominated by rigid gender archetypes.
It's really the narrative "flashbacks," though, that I find most compelling through the novel, and the noir craftsmanship is worth the read. It's a fine read, and another great addition to the Hard Case Crime print.
The plot, though, is probably the book's weakest area, as it feels like Ardai only introduces information about the setting when it becomes convenient to the book, and so much of the narrator's constant figuring and "detecting" seems to serve to hide the fact that the "twist" of the novel is so utterly predictable.
The book's sexual politics, though, are at least fairly interesting; there's a femme fatale and a male detective, and yet much of the book illustrates just how fragile the male detective is (emotionally and physically) and how powerful the femme fatale can be. This is not to say that the book is some feminist masterpiece; on the contrary, the novel's overarching structure reiterates traditional gender roles, but its complications are at least welcome in a genre dominated by rigid gender archetypes.
It's really the narrative "flashbacks," though, that I find most compelling through the novel, and the noir craftsmanship is worth the read. It's a fine read, and another great addition to the Hard Case Crime print.