The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes

The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes by Lawrence Block
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When private eye Doak Miller goes undercover to catch a woman attempting to hire a hitman to murder her husband, he doesn't count on falling in love with her. There's just the little matter of getting her husband out of the way...

When you get home from work to find a mysterious package containing the upcoming Lawrence Block book on your doorstep, you drop what you're doing and get readin'.

The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes is a modern take on the classic noir tale of a man falling for a woman and then bumping off her husband, only to be consumed by madness and guilt. Doak Miller is a former cop and a lady's man who finds himself face to face with his fantasy girl. How will he attempt to bump off her husband?

Block's writing is as crisp as ever and there's a lot of sex in this book. It's like Lawrence Block ripped a page from the James M. Cain playbook and thrust it repeatedly into one of his early smut novels. Not only does The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes read like a sexualized modernization of Double Indemnity or The Postman Always Rings Twice, the character of Doak adds some additional wrinkles I won't give away here. As more is revealed of Doak's true nature, you have to wonder if anyone will make it out alive.

The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes is a worth addition to the Hard Case Crime Series and everything I've come to know and love about Lawrence Block's Hard Case novels. Four out of five stars.



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