City of Lost Girls (Ed Loy Series #5)

by Declan Hughes

Overview

“Ed Loy is…more than worthy of a place among the great creations of Chandler and Hammett. Hughes is simply the best Irish crime novelist of his generation.”

—John Connolly

 

Shamus Award winner and Edgar® Award nominee Declan Hughes does for Dublin what Dennis Lehane does for his native Boston. In City of Lost Girls, “Ireland’s Ross MacDonald” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) transports his private investigator, Ed Loy, from the Emerald Isle to the mean streets of Los Angeles and into the sordid heart of Hollywood in search of three young missing woman. City of Lost Girls is unrelentingly exciting and refreshingly intelligent—another shining example of how Hughes “demonstrates that the private detective novel can be vital, modern, and relevant in the right hands” (Laura Lippman).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061689918
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/29/2011
Series:	Ed Loy Novels , #5
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

An award—winning playwright and screenwriter, Declan Hughes is cofounder and former artistic director of Rough Magic Theatre Company. He was Writer—in—Association with the Abbey Theatre and lives in Dublin with his wife and two daughters.

Editorial Reviews

“Declan Hughes’ detective novels. . . . owe a literary debt less to Hammett and Chandler than to Ross MacDonald’s Lew Archer books, family melodrama disguised as P.I. fiction. . . . Hughes’ third go-round with private eye Ed Loy tips its narrative hat to Sophocles and other purveyors of Greek tragedy.” - Los Angeles Times on THE PRICE OF BLOOD
“Mr. Hughes is a highly impressive noir newcomer to this field.” - New York Times on THE PRICE OF BLOOD
“Declan Hughes once again demonstrates that the private detective novel can be vital, modern and relevant in the right hands…. Here’s hoping that Ed Loy, the anchor of this standout series, is up to taking a few more beatings.” - Laura Lippman, bestselling author of What the Dead Know and Life Sentences
“It doesn’t get much better than finding a writer you really enjoy and then discovering he already has four books under his belt.... Everyone who pops up in these pages is delightfully quirky, in a dark sort of way, and has me reserving copies of the previous book.” - Charlotte Observer
“A remarkable series of noir crime novels that impressively graft the hard-boiled detective style onto contemporary Dublin.... A violent climax worthy of Hughes’ hard-boiled American antecedents.” - Los Angeles Times
“Hughes’s characters have depth, his scenes have drama, and his sentences have grace.... [A] gifted Irish writer.... The characters who count...are substantial figures with considerable heart.” - New York Times Book Review
“Hughes’ prose is lush, rich with detail, peppered with historical and literary references.... Hughes is not only a novelist but also a veteran playwright and screenwriter — and reading his novels is not unlike watching an epic movie unfold on the big screen.... The suspense is irresistible. The writing is superb, at times bordering on poetry. And the characters are superbly drawn — so real that you could almost shoot them yourself.” - Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers
“Relentless, wayward, compassionate and all too human, Ed Loy is a Classic hard-boiled private detective, more than worthy of a place among the Great creations of Chandler and Hammett. Hughes is simply the best Irish crime novelist of his generation.” - John Connolly
“Hughes’ brilliant creation of the charismatic Donovan propels the story.... Donovan is ‘a carouser extraordinaire,’ ‘a mad wayward bastard’...and mesmerizes nearly every character in the book. Not even the smart, formidable Loy is immune, and neither is the reader.” - Booklist
“Declan Hughes does for Dublin what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles, warts and all. If you don’t love this, don’t dare call yourself a crime fiction fan. ” - Val McDermid, author of A Place of Execution

From the Publisher

Declan Hughes isn't just an­other gruff voice in the barking crowd of noir crime writers. His characters have depth, his scenes have drama, and his sentences have grace.
—The New York Times

Marilyn Stasio