Friday means Friday's Forgotten Books. Todd Mason will have the complete list on his blog here.....
A noir tale full of misdirection, violence and guilt begins with the
death of Dorothy Louise Burke. Her very angry mother wants John Blake to
find out who killed her daughter. Detective work isn't what he does
anymore and he isn't what she expected to find at the small memorial
service. When her pleas for help are rebuffed her hostility grows.
"'What's
wrong with you?" She didn't wait for an answer, which was just as well
because I didn't have one to give her.'" (Page 19, Chapter 1)
John
Blake doesn't have many answers. It has been three years since the
events depicted in the novel Little Girl Lost and he escaped/drifted
into the writing program at Columbia. Paired with Dorothy (whom everyone
else but Mom called Dorrie) for an assignment, the kindred souls full
of pain and guilt bonded. A romance began and a pact was made only to be
broken. With her death, an angry and driven John Blake begins both a
public and a private hunt for answers.
What follows is a dark
rich tale full of violence, vengeance and urban justice where nothing
and no one is what they appear. In one reading, events of the first book
were a long prelude that put John Blake right here at this time to not
only deal with the present but to answer for the past. Justice can take a
long time and it has been years. In another reading, John is just a
domino, one of many in a long complex trail that forms a never ending
line, tickled by the fickle finger of God.
However you interpret
the book, there is no question that this is a powerfully good read as
well as a disturbing one. Relentless in its pacing as it build steadily
towards a conclusion that is both a surprise and inevitable this is a
read that hooks the reader from the opening line,
"I was a private investigator once. But then we've all been things we aren't anymore." (Page 15, Chapter 1)
This
sums up the entire novel in a sense where everything is two sides of
the same coin. This novel is well worth your investment as is the first
novel Little Girl Lost."
Obviously, the novels should be read in order.
Songs Of Innocence: A John Blake Mystery
By Richard Aleas
Hard Case Crime
http://www.hardcasecrime.com/
July 2007
ISBN #978-0-8439-5773
Paperback
256 Pages
$6.99
Kevin R. Tipple © 2007, 2013
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2 comments:
Bad news in one way, Kevin, but good news in another. There is another step, which means there is hope for remission. I am hoping she gets the stem cell/bone marrow transplant she needs and that it finally ends her cancer and her (and your)suspense.
Assuming she is a candidate for the deal, yes, there is hope for remission. What can be done if it turns out she is not a candidate, I have no idea.
Before that can be done, her port has to be put back in her chest. Nobody called us yesterday so that is still apparently not scheduled.
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