THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES by Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block is a pretty popular crime author, but many readers aren't fully familiar with the beginning of his career when he wrote a bunch of softcore smut and lesbian erotica novels under various pen names. In recent years, many of those books have become more popular due to reprints and he even resurrected one of his more popular alter egos, Jill Emerson, for an original novel for Hard Case Crime called Getting Off. Now with The Girl With The Deep Blue Eyes, his new original Hard Case novel, with it's healthy doses of erotica mixed with classic noir stylings, it feels like he unofficially resurrected the Andrew Shaw alter ego, who worked with the same booty-noir mix back in the day. And it seems like Andrew is super pumped  about being unleashed onto our post-50 Shades society, because he definitely holds nothing back on the smut-tip with this book!

An ex-NYC cop turned Florida private eye named Doak Miller gets an assignment to act as a hitman and entrap a trophy wife looking to knock off her husband. But once he meets her, he sees the girl of his dreams and he concocts a plan to keep her.

At first, I got a bit frustrated because the plot didn't really move at the pace I wanted it to. It didn't really seem like much was happening for the first half of the book, and then I realized that the book is less about the crime and the hot sex and more about the character of Doak Miller, which I didn't expect. And the way Block slowly and skillfully reveals more and more about Doak's character is pretty compelling. One really stand-out aspect that I enjoyed is that it takes place in 2014 and Doak is a film noir fan. Because of this, he recognizes that his situation is the same as the characters in classic noirs like The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. He knows this convention and knows that those characters never get away in the end. But what makes this even more noir is that although he already knows this, he thinks his situation just might be different, and begins to set everything in motion anyway. He's a great pulp character and Block really illustrates the inevitability of noir. Recommended to crime fans, it's a cool read that might give you a thrill! And just maybe give you a tingle in your underpants!!

GRADE: B