Songs of Innocence
A John Blake Mystery
by Richard Aleas
Richard Aleas
has gotten to the heart of the matter when looking at suicide and
murder. He takes John Blake into dark places and rough areas in
search of an ultimate end of life, all the while carrying the reader
into the depths of sorrow and searching for answers. John is a young
“retired” detective who has taken a position at a local college
to keep busy while his mind repairs the problems of a failed attempt
at love and murder and much self-recrimination. A very close friend
of his, Dorrie Burke, a young college student who has a double life,
has found out some things in her quest for finding her father that
even John Blake didn't know, (though he supplied the man's name
to Dorrie as a favor), and this has led Dorrie into unfathomable
depths of despair and self-hatred. This is a fast moving book that
deals with a few stories all at once, one being the seamier side
of life in the New York Sex trades, and the other, the stark realization
of what has caused the destruction of a marriage and the alienation
of a father and the realization that young, beautiful Dorrie had
nothing to live for. But was she murdered for her knowledge of those
very sex trades that she took part in, or did she take the ultimate
way out? Did someone do it for her, or was the pain inside of her
mind so great that she just couldn't go on anymore? Blake has to
find out. And while doing this, he comes into contact with, and
in the middle of, several other murders and attempts at murder that
didn't go as planned in the battles of the forces of the Sex Industry
that many cities, not just New York , have. Songs
of Innocence is very fast paced and intense in places, because
of the subject matter and the depth that Aleas goes into in his
character development. However, I found it to be a gripping read
and would recommend it to anyone who likes to look deeper into things
that seem OK on the surface and take a chance to poke around a bit,
only to find that they area not really as they seem. All in all
a good read and I think that I am going to read his first book Little
Girl Lost .
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The
Book |
Dorchester Publishing |
July 2007 |
Mass Market Paperback |
10:
0843957735
13: 978-0843957730 |
Present day thriller, murder mystery |
More
at Amazon.com |
Excerpt |
NOTE: Sequel to Little Girl Lost. Hard-case crime novel
that is fast hitting, carries a punch that leaves you looking
for hidden meanings and disquieting answers to a would be suicide,
or so it was looking like. Gripping story. |
The Reviewer |
Claudia
Turner VanLydegraf, |
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