John Blake is THE best kind of friend to have - no doubt about it! Everyone should have a friend like him.

Dorrie Burke did. And when Blake finds out that she died, he does what he promised her he would do.

This is a good sequel to "Little Girl Lost". With the way it ends, I'd say it was a really good sequel. I liked it 'till page 238, and I LOVED it from there until the end. A very sad, but excellent, ending. ( )

Holy shit that was dark! The back cover promises a shocking conclusion and it's not just hype! ( )

Songs of Innocence is the second novel by Richard Aleas, the pen
name of Charles Ardai, who is the founder and editor of Hard Case
Crime. Ardai has also worked as a writer and producer for the tv show
Haven. This book is paired with his earlier work, Little Girl Lost,
although it is not necessary to read the first one before diving into this
one. They are both great books and I highly recommend both for your
reading enjoyment.

What is unique and different about these books in the crime fiction
universe is that the protagonist of both books (meaning the main
character) is not some tough, cynical, hard-boiled detective who wins
nearly every fight, sweet talks every woman he meets, and has a
clever quip ready for any occasion. Instead, Ardai chose to center his
work around a soft-boiled center. The lead character, John Blake, is a
Peter Parker type for those of you familiar with Spiderman. In other
words, Blake is the superhero or super-detective's mild-manner alter
ego. Blake is someone who looks young for his age. At 21, he looked
16 and, at 24, he looked 18. He appears to be an innocent hayseed
from Nebraska or Iowa and isn't tough. It appears that using Blake as
the hero of the story was a very conscious choice on the part of Ardai
and Blake gives these stories a strong emotional center and moral
focus.

In Little Girl Lost, Blake was a college dropout who joined an older
retired police officer in a small insignificant detective agency. He
chased down demons and ghosts of his past in that one. Songs of
Innocence begins three years later. After the events of Little Girl Lost,
Blake is disillusioned with the detective business and heartbroken. He returns to college and is a teaching assistant in a writing program. He
has one close friend in the writing program: Dorrie.

Dorrie is tall and
so beautiful that every head turns as she walks by. As Ardai describes
her, "she entered a classroom as if there was a curtain at one end and
a row of photographers popping flashbulbs at the other. It wasn't
something she did deliberately, but she did it nonetheless, and the rest
of us all turned and watched as she found her way to an empty chair, .
. ." "She was beautiful," he explains, "in a way you're accustomed to
seeing on movie posters or the pages of a magazine but not in real
life." "[Y]ou couldn't stop looking at her," he said.

John and Dorrie are practically inseparable. John also knows Dorrie's
secret: that she moonlights from the writing program doing massages
and other "tricks" for Johns. It pay her college tuition. It is Blake who finds Dorrie's body in her bathtub, plastic bag pulled
tight over her head and suicide book nearby. By pre-arrangement, he
scours her apartment for things that her mother wouldn't be
comfortable knowing about, i.e., all the outfits Dorrie used in her work
and her computer. He also notices that her calendar and papers have
all been shredded. After accessing her computer, he finds that
someone erased all her e-mail. Dorrie's mother doesn't believe it was a
suicide although how someone got in the locked apartment does not
compute. John also realizes that things don't make sense and recalls
that he and Dorrie had a pact that, if they ever had suicidal thoughts,
they would call the other first and talk it out.

The investigation takes John into the underworld of massage parlors
and Asian bathhouses. It pits him against Hungarian gangsters and
chased into dark corners where only rats cold be found. John
desperately tries to solve the mystery as a statewide manhunt ensues
for him and the newspapers all shout headlines accusing him of vicious
murder after vicious murder.

It's a quick read and hard to put down. Along the way, the reader sees
innocence stripped from people as they feel forced to react to the
events that occur. Although this takes place in the modern world of cell
phones and computers, it is every bit as compelling as many classic
noir tales. The darkness and despair can be felt throughout this book. I
can't remember if the sun ever shined. ( )

Songs of Innocence is the first of the hardcase crime novels I have read, a flashback to the days of old where crime noir with pop-up style covers populated the streets. I doubt I'll read another I enjoyed as much as this one for a long time coming.

As a mystery, it's rich. The unlucky protagonist, still carrying baggage from trauma three years ago (covered in the prequel Little Girl Lost), has been taking creative writing classes for journalism in order to rest and recover. His former life of private investigation has been lost to him as he felt suffocated from real life's invasion.

He meets another disturbed woman living two lives, someone who he can retreat from the world with and share his own troubles, but finds her dead in her apartment when she won't return his call. Since she didn't honor their pact of calling before suicide - as they both had discussed before - he's convinced she's been murdered and takes up his past detective life to bring justice to her name.

Entering the streets, he's soon threatened, beat up, framed for a vicious murder, and must fall into an unsettling underground sex ring to find out the truth. What he uncovers is not only surprising, but the guilt he's been carrying around with him never gets relieved. It ends with a final slap of the face, something that will be remembered by most readers for awhile to come.

Edgar Award Winner Richard Aleas creates a world that may as well have been in the fifties, even if the scene is placed in the modern world. The gritty feel easily seeps through the pages, and the story - while not overly fast in pace - is gripping and doesn't let up once you start reading. There's of course a jumbo pot of characters, but unusually the emphasis is on Blake, which isn't always common in detective novels of this sort.

This is one of those books where it's difficult to pinpoint brilliance and likability factor, because in books as well as in life - either it's just there or it just isn't. This is one of the cases where it just IS, between flaw-ridden characters, scenes brimming with angst, and tragically wasted life.

Tension is fierce where it's needed, and while the novel contains a fair share of suspense, it was never meant to be about that. Instead it's more a mental deterioration in the face of loss. A nihilistic book where violence never stops, and just when you think you may have it figured out, another dead end is around the corner. This is no average crime noir detective, and as a result Songs of Innocent stands out proudly among the crowd. ( )

It had been a few years since I read Little Girls Lost, the first book in the John Blake series. Fortunately, the author provides references throughout so the reader can see why John Blake is so filled with anguish as he is in hot pursuit of his girlfriend's killer. The story moves swiftly--as does Blake--through the gritty streets of New York following clues, being followed, and ducking the cops that want him as a person of interest in a couple of murders. There is a lot of action, snappy dialogue, and twists and turns. But nothing prepares you for the ending. Read the last page slowly.