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"Bird thou never wert ... ."

The new imprint, Hard Case Crime, has released its second original title, the debut novel of Richard Aleas entitled Little Girl Lost (221 pages, $6.99).

That title echoes a composition by the Romantic poet William Blake, from The Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Aleas' narrator is private investigator "John Blake," whose name echoes those of poets John (Milton) and the aforementioned William (Blake). Toss in a nod to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and a late-in-the-book reference to P.I. John Blake's own interest in poetry and you get the sense this isn't quite your typical hardboiled crime novel.

Blake emerges as a kind of tyro detective -- still in touch with and deferential to his aging hardcase mentor ... a guy who exudes a "preppy" vibe and looks much younger than his years. John Blake is also a detective not above putting up a threatened stripper in his mom's house -- hiding her in his childhood "crib" with its narrow bed and walls still adorned with the unfortunate posters of his pop culture-saturated youth.

The mystery Blake is called to solve recalls the 1980s' J. Geils Band tune about a high school sweetheart turned centerfold ... with a dark noir overlay.

Blake's high school sweetheart, Miranda Sugarman, has been reported murdered.

When last seen, Miranda was focused on college and a career as an eye doctor.

Miranda Sugarman, crime victim, hasn't quite followed her high school dream -- if the newspaper headlines are to be believed.

Miranda's last job had more to do with being seen than helping people see: She was working in a low-rent strip club when she fell.

Nostalgia, affection and terrible curiosity impel John to investigate her murder.

Aleas (and that last name smacks of a pseudonym) succeeds in melding a classic hardboiled missing persons case and something a bit deeper with Little Girl Lost's subtle but intriguing literary undertow.

And a repeatedly discarded and rescued bird emerges as a surprisingly affecting metaphor -- simultaneously evoking Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Skylark" and Hammett's "Maltese Falcon" ... that weighty elusive fowl "that dreams" are "made of."