Sunday, October 9, 2011

Throwaway Girl-David Heinzmann

Throwaway Girl


David Heinzmann

Five Star, Nov 16 2011, $25.95

ISBN 9781432825508



Chicago heiress Alice Jane Ash works as a project coordinator helping the homeless. However, when she drowns, the CPD quickly decide the death of AJ was accidental.



Her mom Jane Ash rejects the official police position as she thinks her caring daughter was murdered. She hires alcoholic private investigator Augustine Flood to investigate what really happened to her daughter. Flood quickly leans the deceased focused almost entirely on rescuing child prostitutes. He further finds out AJ recently took one of the underage hookers Britney with no known surname into her apartment. AJ follows Britney’s nebulous trail of prostitution, pimps and Johns to Las Vegas, Los Angeles and finally ending in Clarksdale, Mississippi as he probes what happened to the late heiress back in Chicago.



The second Augustine Flood private investigator tale (see A Word to the Wise) is a fast-paced, action-packed thriller in which the lead’s path forms a triangle with no twists or spins. The mystery is clever, but it is the protagonist’s dark tour of the morbid underbelly of American society that is a disheartening condemnation that gut punchs the reader with somber realism.



Harriet Klausner



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