Declan Hughes is an Irish playwright turned novelist. His latest book, the Color of Blood, is the second novel to feature private eye Ed Loy. Loy debuted in Hughes’s first novel, The Wrong Kind of Blood when he returned to Dublin, Ireland to bury his mother. At that point, Loy had lived in Los Angeles for twenty years. That bit of business led to an investigation that was covered in the first novel. Loy is still rediscovering his roots in the town where he grew up.

In the new novel, Loy is hired by Doctor Shane Howard, a well-to-do dentist that runs a very successful practice. From the onset, Loy -- and the reader -- are treated to mysterious happenings. Although he’s been retained by Doctor Howard, Loy is questioned and treated suspiciously by the family lawyer.

When he does meet with Doctor Howard, Loy is hired to find the dentist’s nineteen year old daughter, Emily. Someone is blackmailing Howard. He’s been sent an envelope containing pictures of Emily engaged in various sex acts. Doctor Howard is convinced she was held against her will and forced to participate in the acts of degradation.

On the other hand, the dentist appears way too calm to Loy. Howard hires the private detective almost too casually, and seems to brush the whole thing off as a nuisance.

The whole setup of this novel reminded me immediately of Raymond Chandler’s first novel about his signature private investigator, Philip Marlowe. Like Loy, Marlowe was brought into a highly dysfunctional family filled with sexual secrets and substance abuse problems.

In no time at all, Loy finds himself lied to and treated like hired help. But, like Marlowe, he’s deeply drawn into the investigation and the layers of lies that are woven around the Howard family.

Hughes’s writing also reminded me a lot of another great private eye writer. Ross MacDonald also covered the crime beat with his perennial shamus, Lew Archer. Although Ross McDonald’s novels started off as imitations of Chandler and Hammett, the writing deepened and tended to reflect more of the sociological problems going on in the world at that time. At least the problems as they were presented in Southern California.