Campaign for the American Reader: Pg. 69: "Little Girl Lost"

Richard Aleas’ Little Girl Lost received nominations for both the Edgar Award and the Shamus Award.

I asked him to put the novel to the "page 69 test." Here is his reply:

I didn't know what to expect when I opened to page 69 of Little Girl Lost -- it's been four years since I wrote it and at least a year since I last read it, and I had no idea whether p.69 would yield something typical or something aberrant, dross or a gem.

Now that I've looked at it, I have to say I still don't know. It's a scene where detective John Blake is talking to a patron in an underworld bar about a vicious drug dealer who may -- or may not -- have been responsible for the murder of someone very dear to the detective. Blake himself doesn't appear on this page, nor does the woman whose death he's investigating; the character who's speaking never appears again in the book. In those respects, the page is not typical. But in establishing just how awful the drug dealer is, it sets up an antagonist whose ominous influence will hang over the rest of the book -- and whose relentlessness and capacity for cruelty will be central to the climactic moral decision John Blake finds himself facing.

As for the dross vs. gem question, well, I leave that to wiser minds than mine...

From page 69:

...So, these two punks are going through the neighborhood, and they come to this enormous place, and they figure, this guy’s got to have some good stuff. So they break in through the garage, go room to room, filling up their bags. And God knows he’s got plenty to take any night of the week -- but just as it happens, this particular night is the night before Murco is going to be making a buy, so he has a suitcase full of cash waiting to be handed over to the gentlemen from Colombia. The punks go into his bedroom, and there he is, counting the money. They must’ve thought they’d died and gone to heaven.

“They pull guns on him, tie him up, smack him around some, take the money, and they leave. A million dollars in cash, plus whatever else they picked up along the way. It’s a better score than they could’ve imagined. There’s just one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“They didn’t kill him.” He finished the rest of his drink, set the glass down carefully. “I could have told them. You’re going to pull something like that, you have to go all the way. You can’t leave him there tied up, blood running down his face, for his son to find when the old man doesn’t call for two days. I don’t care if you wore masks, disguised your voices, I don’t care if you left no fingerprints, this man’s not the fucking police force, he’ll find you and then you’re going to wish you’d never been born. And that’s what happened.”

I felt my skin start to crawl...

Richard Aleas is a pseudonym for Charles Ardai, who also earned a Shamus award nomination for his short story, "Nobody Wins." His work has appeared in dozens of publications including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine as well as anthologies such as Best Mystery Stories of the Year and The Year’s Best Horror Stories.

Many thanks to Charles for the input.

Read a sample chapter from Little Girl Lost.

Among the praise for Little Girl Lost:

"Excellent...[A] machinegun-paced debut...Aleas has done a fine job of capturing both the style and the spirit of the classic detective novel."
--Chicago Sun-Times

"Combine[s] the noir sensibility with emotional depth and superior writing."
--Baltimore Sun

"Barrels forth at the speed of [a] Manhattan taxi...and contains some whiplash-inducing plot twists...Tightly written from start to finish, this crime novel is as satisfyingly edgy as the pulp classics that inspired it."
--Publishers Weekly

"[A] slice of pulp heaven."
--January Magazine

"A wonderful novel, brilliantly plotted, beautifully written, and completely satisfying."
--Richard S. Prather

"A great character with a very original voice. Little Girl Lost feels both old fashioned and bang up to date at the same time...The Manhattan setting is really well done and the plot fairly clips along in this diverting and exhilarating PI novel."
--Donna Moore