Review of City Of Lost Girls

City of Lost Girls
Declan Hughes
Harper Collins
297 pages

No one does crime fiction better than Declan Hughes who’s Ed Loy with his mixture of European savvy and Irish Blarney give new light to the no-nonsense PI.
Declan shines once again as he sends Ed Loy on an unsolvable case twenty years old that started on the shores of LA and now it’s happening again as Dublin turns into The City of Lost Girls. But crime fighting is never easy and made harder by the fact that he’s dealing with Hollywood movers and shakers in Ireland to make a film, no matter their all sons of Éire.
Be prepared to hold your breath often as he takes us on a ride of bright spots and blight spots of Dublin and if that’s not enough we’ll spend half of the novel in LA fighting traffic, crowds and ghosts of the dead. His plot is current in it’s content and context, interesting in it’s reading and terrorizing in it’s implications. He’s masterful at words as well as feelings as he imparts both into his incredible work of fiction. His characters are all wonderfully crafted and Ed Loy shines once again as his hard nosed hard headed protagonist. His supporting characters some of whom we’re reacquainting with are equally important to the telling of the tale. And what a tale it is, snatched off the front papers of any major acropolis, missing young women presumed dead. It’s a grand scale who-done-it with a touch of noir and a whole lot of heart that will keep you guessing until and only until Declan let’s us in on his secret.
Ed Loy has a prosperous career in front of him and I can’t think of a more capable detective to handle the worst of what society can throw at him. Let him lead you through the pages as he unwraps the clues and gets to the bottom of that all elusive Case Solved. The City of Lost Girls is Declan Hughes 5th in his Ed Loy detective series.