But that's not why this former Lolita lovely hires ex-PI and sometime goalie (sic) Harding. No, what Cassie Ryan wants is someone to find her kid brother Kim who vanished twenty-two years ago from a church bus - all that remains of a family slaughtered by her psychotic. And now she's receiving cryptic notes that stir old memories. Reopen old wounds.

Wessel's novel is unpretentious stuff. Taking its cue from the infamous Traci Lords debacle, it elects to play a tight game, swiftly establishing its stock cast - rich porn collectors, enigmatic Vietnamese detectives, veteran stone-killers - then moving about the board until only the guilty and the damaged remain.

Nothing so frighteningly original then, but at least a game played with a degree of wit and verve on Wessel's part. One in which he almost pulls off the difficult trick of rendering Harding both smart-arse and likeable. Almost. And at only 240 pages, it certainly doesn't out-stay its welcome.

What it can't do, however, is leap the hurdle anyone penning a book like this sets for themselves: the solution has to come from within characters we already know. As a consequence there will always be a degree of ho-hum about the resolution that no amount of clever, rain-soaked manoeuvring will overcome. Bearing that one minor caveat in mind, Pretty Ballerina comes cautiously recommended.