- This item is eligible for our 4-for-3 promotion. Eligible products include select Books, Single Copy Magazines, and Home & Garden items. Buy any 4 eligible items and get the lowest-priced item free. Here's how (restrictions apply)
Join Amazon Prime and ship Two-Day for free and Overnight for $3.99. Already a member? Sign in.
Songs of Innocence (Hard Case)
and over 300,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle – Amazon’s new wireless reading device.
Learn more
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
by Christa Faust
|
by Max Phillips
|
by Gil Brewer
|
by Cornell Woolrich
|
by George Axelrod
|
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Aleas, the pen name for Hard Case Crime founder Charles Ardai, solidifies his reputation as one of the finer modern hard-boiled writers with his second John Blake novel (following 2004's Little Girl Lost). Blake, a young but already deeply scarred detective, has given up PI work—his last case cost him the life of his lover, and almost that of a dear friend, so Blake has taken a sedate job as an administrative assistant at Columbia University, where he's enrolled in a creative writing class. When a classmate and confidant, Dorothy Burke, dies in her bathtub, the police take one look at the plastic bag over her head and the copy of Final Exit nearby, and declare it a suicide. Dorothy's mother has other ideas and ropes Blake back into his old trade to pursue her suspicions that Dorothy was murdered. Before she died, Dorothy let Blake in on her secret life as a prostitute—information the police don't have—and he pursues that lead deep into New York City's violent underworld. Throughout, Aleas effortlessly channels the spirit of the pulps with crisp prose and an unrelentingly grim plot line, and his powerful conclusion will drop jaws. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Richard Aleas is the pseudonym of Charles Ardai, Hard Case Crime's publisher, but this is no vanity effort. And while he's obviously a fan of pulp paperbacks—from the words on the page to the girls on the covers—this is no mere mimickry, either: his boy-faced sleuth, John Blake (first seen in Little Girl Lost, 2004), brings the radio-age gumshoe into the Internet era without missing a step. In Songs of Innocence, the Internet is nothing less than the new boulevard of broken dreams. Blake has a knack for attracting "birds with broken wings"; his attempt to prove that his best friend, the beautiful and melancholy Dorrie Burke, didn't kill herself leads him deep into a seedy world of massage-table prostitutes who advertise by creating fake identities online. Some readers might want a bit more action and a bit less soul-searching, but with a sleuth named after a mystical, romantic poet, should we expect anything less? The truly noir ending leaves us guessing whether Blake will be back for Songs of Experience, but here's hoping. Graff, Keir
See all Editorial Reviews
Starred Review. Aleas, the pen name for Hard Case Crime founder Charles Ardai, solidifies his reputation as one of the finer modern hard-boiled writers with his second John Blake novel (following 2004's Little Girl Lost). Blake, a young but already deeply scarred detective, has given up PI work—his last case cost him the life of his lover, and almost that of a dear friend, so Blake has taken a sedate job as an administrative assistant at Columbia University, where he's enrolled in a creative writing class. When a classmate and confidant, Dorothy Burke, dies in her bathtub, the police take one look at the plastic bag over her head and the copy of Final Exit nearby, and declare it a suicide. Dorothy's mother has other ideas and ropes Blake back into his old trade to pursue her suspicions that Dorothy was murdered. Before she died, Dorothy let Blake in on her secret life as a prostitute—information the police don't have—and he pursues that lead deep into New York City's violent underworld. Throughout, Aleas effortlessly channels the spirit of the pulps with crisp prose and an unrelentingly grim plot line, and his powerful conclusion will drop jaws. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Richard Aleas is the pseudonym of Charles Ardai, Hard Case Crime's publisher, but this is no vanity effort. And while he's obviously a fan of pulp paperbacks—from the words on the page to the girls on the covers—this is no mere mimickry, either: his boy-faced sleuth, John Blake (first seen in Little Girl Lost, 2004), brings the radio-age gumshoe into the Internet era without missing a step. In Songs of Innocence, the Internet is nothing less than the new boulevard of broken dreams. Blake has a knack for attracting "birds with broken wings"; his attempt to prove that his best friend, the beautiful and melancholy Dorrie Burke, didn't kill herself leads him deep into a seedy world of massage-table prostitutes who advertise by creating fake identities online. Some readers might want a bit more action and a bit less soul-searching, but with a sleuth named after a mystical, romantic poet, should we expect anything less? The truly noir ending leaves us guessing whether Blake will be back for Songs of Experience, but here's hoping. Graff, Keir
See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
(learn more)
sin factory Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Songs of Innocence, New York, Eva Burke, Jorge Ramos, Stu Kennedy, John Blake, Dorrie Burke, Brian Vincent, Final Exit, Kurland Wessels, Black Ardo, Carmine Street, James Smith, Little Korea, Doug Harper, Dome Burke, Barking Boat, Candace Webb, Robert Lee, Cop Cot, Little Willie, James Mirsky, Julia Cortenay, Black Plague, Central Park Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
sin factory Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Songs of Innocence, New York, Eva Burke, Jorge Ramos, Stu Kennedy, John Blake, Dorrie Burke, Brian Vincent, Final Exit, Kurland Wessels, Black Ardo, Carmine Street, James Smith, Little Korea, Doug Harper, Dome Burke, Barking Boat, Candace Webb, Robert Lee, Cop Cot, Little Willie, James Mirsky, Julia Cortenay, Black Plague, Central Park Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
 |
62% buy the item featured on this page: Songs of Innocence (Hard Case) $5.02 |
 |
13% buy Little Girl Lost (Hard Case Crime) $6.99 |
 |
11% buy Money Shot (Hard Case Crime) $6.99 |
 |
7% buy Somebody Owes Me Money $6.99 |
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Help others find this product — tag it for Amazon search
No one has tagged this product for Amazon search yet. Why not be the first to suggest a search for which it should appear?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Customer Discussions
Beta (What's this?)
New! See all customer communities, and bookmark your communities to keep track of them.
|
This product's forum
(1 discussion)
Active discussions in related forums
|
Product Information from the Amapedia Community
Beta (What's this?)Be the first person to add an article about this item at Amapedia.com.
› See featured Amapedia.com articles
Listmania!
So You'd Like to...
|
|
Look for Similar Items by Category
The New Braun bodycruZer |
Best Books of 2008 |
Buy Three Books, Get a Fourth Free |
||||||||
|
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
You have no recently viewed items or searches.
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. Look to the right column to find helpful suggestions for your shopping session. |
Continue shopping: Top Sellers
| ||||
| ||
| ||
| ||
| ||
| ||
