City of Lost Girls (Ed Loy PI) [Hardcover]

Declan Hughes (Author)

Book Description

Series: Ed Loy PI | Publication Date: April 6, 2010

Dublin PI Ed Loy tackles a case that takes him back to Los Angeles -- his home of twenty years -- and a past he'd rather forget in this gripping new novel in the Edgar Award-nominated and Shamus Award-winning series.

Ed Loy has laid his ghosts to rest. He's been back in his hometown of Dublin for several years, his work is wearing but steady, and he's in his first loving relationship since the death of his daughter caused the ruin of his marriage six years ago. But when two girls go missing from a Dublin film set, Loy knows his past has caught up with him.

Loy's longtime friend, film director Jack Donovan, is shooting his next movie, an Irish historical epic. Donovan and his three right-hand men -- together, the Gang of Four -- have made numerous movies together spanning several decades, but the new film is primed to be their masterpiece. Production grinds to a halt, though, when not one but two female cast members fail to show up to work. Chances are they're party girls sleeping off a late night, but the circumstances feel familiar to Loy. A little too familiar. Twenty years ago, three girls disappeared from a movie Donovan was shooting in Malibu and their bodies were never found. Today, Loy has a sinking feeling in his heart: Those girls are gone.

Knowing that one of the film crew -- maybe even Jack Donovan himself -- is responsible for the girls' disappearances, Loy races to uncover the truth before a third girl goes missing. And in order to find answers, he must return to L.A. and delve deep into his past. But while he's so far from home, a cunning killer seizes the chance to strike at what's closest to Ed Loy's heart.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Shamus Award–winner Hughes stumbles in his fifth novel featuring Irish PI Ed Loy (after All the Dead Voices). Instead of playing to his strengths, Irish society and politics (as he did in All the Dead Voices), Hughes puts Loy on the track of a serial killer without offering anything new to the concept. Movie director Jack Donovan, who's filming in Dublin, hires Loy to identify the person behind some threatening letters, but the inquiry becomes much more complicated after two extras on the set go missing. These disappearances awaken unpleasant memories for Loy, who connects them with a series of similar events that occurred years earlier near another Donovan film shoot, making Donovan and some of his crew members obvious suspects. Clichéd sections from the killer's point-of-view and a contrived ending will leave series fans hoping this outing is an uncharacteristic lapse. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

Larger-than-life Irish movie director Jack Donovan has returned to Dublin to make a film, but he’s emotionally rattled by cryptic, threatening messages. He seeks out his one-time friend, Dublin PI Ed Loy, for help. Loy signs on, but the disappearances of three beautiful young women from the set—something that also happened when Donovan made films in LA—tell Loy he’s looking for a serial killer, and the killer is almost certainly Donovan or one of his faithful retinue, known to Tinseltown buffs as the Gang of Four. This is playwright Hughes’ fourth Ed Loy novel, and his brilliant creation of the charismatic Donovan propels the story and also inhibits it. Donovan is “a carouser extraordinaire,” “a mad wayward bastard” who sings Puccini arias in pubs and mesmerizes nearly every character in the book. Not even the smart, formidable Loy is immune, and neither is the reader. Hughes also has great fun with famous Irish actors and the Hollywood movie industry, but here’s hoping the next Loy story returns to its Irish roots. --Thomas Gaughan

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (April 6, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061689904
• ISBN-13: 978-0061689901
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #515,418 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Declan Hughes is the author of the Ed Loy PI series: The Wrong Kind of Blood; The Colour of Blood; The Price of Blood/The Dying Breed; and All The Dead Voices. His books have been nominated for the Edgar, CWA New Blood Dagger, Shamus, Macavity and Theakston's Old Peculier awards, and The Wrong Kind of Blood won the Shamus for Best First PI Novel. Declan is also an award-winning playwright, and the co-founder and former artistic director of Dublin's Rough Magic Theatre Company. His latest novel is called City of Lost Girls.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enthralling, May 4, 2010

By 

E. Crowley (QUINCY, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: City of Lost Girls (Ed Loy PI) (Hardcover)

Declan Hughes' most recent book, CITY OF LOST GIRLS, is different from the previous Ed Loy books. The deranged people who have been a large part of his life are still there but on the edges of the story. In this book, Loy is dealing with a different kind of deranged killer, one who is a predator, enticing his victims by offering them help in the movie world where the line between pretense and reality is difficult to define.

Jack Donovan (who seems to be a combination of Neal Jordan, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, and David Lynch) is a highly successful and acclaimed movie director whose career began with art house movies and progressed to the big screen and the big money. For most of his career, Donovan has worked in California and it was in California, 15 years before, that Ed Loy first met him. They met in a bar and one night Donovan decided to give Loy a part in the movie he was filming. Loy enjoys his 30 seconds of on-screen fame and when Donovan contacts him for help because three extras on his film have disappeared, Loy does his best to find them. The girls where run-aways from different parts of the US and it is only Donovan who notices they are gone and files the missing person reports. Loy has no luck finding them, Donovan's movie is finished, and Loy returns to Ireland.

All these years later, Donovan has returned to make a movie set in Dublin and the two men resume their friendship when Donovan asks Loy to look into some anonymous letters he has been receiving. Loy is willing and starts asking questions, learning that he really doesn't know anything about Jack Donovan at all. Then, Donovan's assistant contacts Ed. An extra on the film has disappeared, and then another, and then Loy decides he needs to put the third girl in hiding. Donovan has developed a style over the years, one in which he focuses on the faces of three minor players and the disappearance of the girls, unavailable now for filming, puts the movie in jeopardy. Donovan and Loy see clearly that this is a repeat of what happened in California and Loy sees clearly, that if the two incidents are connected there are only four suspects. The first is Jack Donovan, the second is Mark Cassidy, the cinematographer, the third is Conor Rowan, the assistant director, and the fourth is Maurice Faye, the producer of all Donovan's films. The Gang of Four are the only people who were at the sites of both disappearances.

Loy doesn't know how the anonymous letters and the disappearances of the girls are connected. Perhaps Kate and Nora did go off to party and will return, apologetically, in their own good time and continue their work on the film. But Loy knows, as he did in California, that these girls are gone.

Hughes intersperses the narrative with the thoughts of the murderer but he doesn't give anything away about the identity until he is ready to let the reader in on the secret. There is less overt brutality in this book but the body count is higher. I think it is the best book of the series.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top notch, April 11, 2010

By 

Noir Fan (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City of Lost Girls (Ed Loy PI) (Hardcover)

Picked this novel up after crime writer Sam Millar gave it a powerful review. I wasn't disappointed. Hughes has a way with language that is almost poetic and has a beautiful sound to it. The story was very convincing, and I found myself reading on long into the night, page after page. The mind of the murderer is rendered in such a fashion in Hughes expert hands, that you will find yourself peeping over your shoulder, just to make sure no one is watching you. With City of Lost Girls, Hughes will broaden his already strong fan base, and welcome new members with open and bloody arms!
Easily the best novel I've read this year.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars MEMORABLE CHARACTERIZATIONS IN THIS SUSPENSE FILLED TALE, April 9, 2010

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: City of Lost Girls (Ed Loy PI) (Hardcover)

Shamus Award winner Declan Hughes isn't just any noteworthy crime writer - he's an Irish one and for this reader that makes all the difference. There's a bit of a poet in him, as well as a richly developed descriptive technique. Now, add to this his two decades as a playwright and screenwriter, a background which he brings to the printed page, and you have CITY OF LOST GIRLS.

With this, the fifth in Hughes's Irish private investigator Ed Loy series we find Loy torn between tracking a psychotic murderer who kills young girls, always a trio of them, and the history he shares with film director Jack Donovan. They go back quite a way; as Loy says of their past, "I don't want to talk about it, don't want to think about it. Sooner or later, we would get to it anyway. The past is always out there, a land mine buried and forgotten about, ready to blow the present apart at any moment." And, there are plenty of land mines for Loy to avoid in this story.

As it happens Donovan is now shooting a film in Dublin, and he calls Loy to find the person sending him threatening letters. The task is complicated when two extras in the film, young girls, go missing. There is a third girl, who must be protected. Eventually, Loy finds a similarity between what is happening in Dublin and what happened in Los Angeles some years ago - three young women disappeared from a film that Jack Donovan was making. LAPD never found them and when presumed dead had no clue as to the murderer.

Loy returns to Los Angeles to try to piece together the connection fully aware that a serial killer is still loose, perhaps in Dublin.

Hughes studs CITY OF LOST GIRLS with vignettes regarding Hollywood's beautiful people and film making itself, while at the same time ratcheting up suspense via an eerie voice, an anonymous narrator who is obviously the killer.

- Gail Cooke