I have wanted to try a selection from the HARD CASE CRIME pulp novel series for most of the decade that they have been around. For the uninitiated, this imprint created in 2004 prints new (including the most recent entry by Stephen King) and reprints classic examples of crime thrillers ( so far including Lawrence Block, Earl Stanley Gardner, Donald Westlake, Ed McBain & Harlan Ellison. My first foray into the series was LITTLE GIRL LOST by Richard Aleas who created the imprint. The story moves well and is fairly well populated with interesting characters. The main character is of course a detective but unlike most novels of this genre where virtually everyone is world weary, Aleas’ PI John Blake is still wet behind the ears. His lack of experience is why he takes on a case that more than likely will just lead to heartache. His relative youth allows for the reader and the detective to learn certain life lessons together as the plot unspools. This was played with at first but was not followed up with very successfully the rest of the way. The plot has sufficient twists and turns to keep the pages turning but about half way through I knew who the killer was. Was kinda waiting around to see how the situation would be wrapped up. Some similarity to a classic, THE MALTESE FALCON. On the whole it was a solid read but it wasn’t always the story that drew me back. Sometimes it was just the feel of the book and the lurid quality to the cover. The HARD CASE CRIME series creates original pulp inspired art for the covers…art work that I relish. Even the shape of the book seems smaller on the whole than other paperbacks…a reminder of the basic blue collar ready to discard nature of the books the series wishes to emulate. I will be collecting new covers.