Little Girl Blue: A Novel of Crime - Hardcover

Cray, David

3.46

69 ratings by Goodreads

9780786709434: Little Girl Blue: A Novel of Crime

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 078670943X ISBN 13: 9780786709434

Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub, 2001

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Everything changes for Lieutenant Julia Brennan, NYPD, on a frigid January morning in Central Park. The commander of a Manhattan North homicide squad, she inspects the body of an unidentified young girl. Naked, her skin blue from the cold, her feet cut and scraped in desperate flight, the grim sight of the dead child in an instant turns Julia Brennan's priorities upside down. Julia Brennan is tough-minded and hard-boiled, like the story this taut, chilling novel unfolds. Yet she suddenly finds herself willing to risk her promotion and, if necessary, her entire career to give a woefully lost child a name and to apprehend the parties responsible for an appalling crime. Her search takes her into the world of pedophiles and foreign adoption agencies that sell children into slavery—a world where, Julia begins to realize, someone has the jump on her, and is killing the very suspects she is hunting. Striking a devil's bargain with an undercover cop from the Sex Crimes Unit, a man who himself becomes a prime candidate for the killer, Julia follows a tortuous path until, alone and dismayed, she sees that she has made a terrible, terrible mistake. Now she faces her greatest fear. For Lieutenant Julia Brennan is also the mother of a young daughter.

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About the Author:

David Cray is the pseudonym of a well-known mystery writer who lives in New York. He is the author of two previous novels, KEEPLOCK and BAD LAWYER.

From Publishers Weekly:

In his third novel the pseudonymous Cray continues to explore the underbelly of New York City, but instead of the judicial system, as in 2000's Bad Lawyer, he takes a riveting look into the sordid world of child prostitution and pornography. NYPD Lieut. Julia Brennan of Manhattan North Homicide is the divorced mother of a teenaged daughter, Corry, and the affectionate niece of the aging Robert Reid, a popular Daily News columnist. When a young girl's frozen naked body is found in wintry Central Park, Brennan's squad investigates the death. An adept plotter, Cray knows how to build a gripping police procedural as the cops first locate the building the girl came from, then uncover a child prostitution and pornography business, as well as international adoption abuses. For Brennan, a tough, ambitious, rule-abiding police officer, the case becomes personal, due to her overwhelming grief for the victim and her growing attraction to Peter Foley, a loose cannon undercover Sex Crimes Unit cop. A lesser talent would have built suspense by having the killer kidnap Brennan, Corry, Uncle Bob or any combination. It doesn't happen here, although they're threatened and there's the obligatory chase. Cray's book is as driven by a cast of well-drawn characters both hard-working, fallible good guys and repugnant pimps, pornographers and their customers as by the rich, fast-moving plot. If a writer can produce a readable book about this odious subject, Cray has done it. The dark, atmospheric jacket sets just the right somber tone. (Jan. 1)Forecast: With rights sold to Britain, Germany, France and Japan, expect this to do as well as last year's Bad Lawyer.

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