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SIMONE Kirsch is my kind of private eye, encountered memorably in Leigh Redhead's Peepshow (Allen & Unwin, 291pp, $21.95) lying on her back in an illuminated window at the Shaft Cinema, legs in the air, wearing a peekaboo nightie and no knickers. Having just graduated at the top of her private investigators course, the irrepressible Kirsch has plenty of tricks up her sleeve (when she's wearing a top).
In this witty, quite brilliant first novel, she goes undercover through Melbourne's secret bars, dives and strip clubs to find out who killed sleazy Francesco "Frank" Parisi and save her best friend Chloe from his underworld brother Sal. Peepshow shakes its arse in front of the reader's face, an affair with no sex but the endorphin rush when you fall in love.
Tara Moss could do with some low lighting, gleaming poles, top knockers and stains on the...