It's the 1950's, and an 18-year girl from South Dakota arrives in New York City expecting to become a dancer, a showgirl, like her older sister who moved there a few years before only to have her sister turn her away and a con man take most of her money, and that's just in the first few pages of a fun and rollicking New York noir crime story called Fifty-to-One.

Tricia Heverstadt gets a big-city education right off the bus in Manhattan, but she's a quick study, and it's a good thing, too, cos she finds herself mixed up in a bigger jam than being an easy target for a flim-flam artist. Tricia writes a "true" story anonymously for Hard Case Crime publishers about robbing a mob boss, a story that turns out to contain more than a kernel of truth and becomes a crime she needs to solve -- or else.

Ardai, who wrote Little Girl Lost and Song of Innocence under the pseuodnym Richard Aleas, has crafted a fast-paced, attention-gripping, hard-boiled crime story that threatens suspension of disbelief only momentarily but in no way lessens the enjoyment of an expertly-written crime noir tale. This is tantalizing, hard-boiled pulp entertainment at its best.

Not only do I highly recommend this Fifty-to-One, I also heartily recommend the two books Ardai wrote as Aleas (mentioned above).