When a panicked young woman slips her hand into his in 1960s Chinatown, just before a knife-wielding stalker attacks, private eye Alex Novalis finds his cherished hard-boiled persona threatened by a romantic streak that has a habit of getting him into trouble. Sandy Smollett is triple trouble—a stripper who comes on like the girl next door and has a way of bending the truth to suit any occasion. Novalis finds her irresistible. It doesn’t help that her mobster boss, a sleazy politico, and an attorney brandishing an envelope stuffed with cash all warn Novalis that Sandy is strictly off limits. Things don’t get easier when Novalis finds a dead man in her apartment, or when they both are kidnapped by homicidal thugs. Who is Sandy Smollett? For once she tells the truth when she tells Novalis, “I’m the Girl from Nowhere.” Christopher Finch’s sophisticated sequel to Good Girl, Bad Girl unfolds against the background of a volatile era of social upheaval.
It’s 1968, New York City is in a state of mayhem, and private eye Alex Novalis is flat broke. So he accepts a mundane missing persons gig from wealthy construction mogul Gabriel Kravitz, whose eighteen-year-old daughter, Lydia, has disappeared. The only lead is that Lydia had been sleeping with Jerry Pedrosian, a radical artist and known womanizer. But there are few clues, and everyone in Lydia’s life seems to be hiding something…including her miniskirted best friend, Andrea Marshall, who Novalis is inconveniently attracted to. And as he traverses the city — from scummy artists’ lofts in pre-gentrified SoHo to luxury penthouses overlooking Central Park — he’ll face more danger than he signed on for. A coolly sophisticated detective story and portrait of late 1960s New York City, Good Girl, Bad Girl offers a glimpse at the forbidden sex, politics, art, drugs, and counterculture violence that ran rampant in its once gloriously gritty streets.
