Los Angeles, aka Dogtown, is headquarters for beautiful, blond, female sleuth Whitney Logan. It's also a daring choice of locales for Mercedes Lambert's first novel. Los Angeles, of course, is also the turf of Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled private eye Philip Marlowe, a tough act to follow.

Dogtown begins with a quotation from Chandler's The Little Sister published in 1949: "If it's that delicate,' I said, 'maybe you need a lady detective."'

That's Marlowe talking, and you can bet his comment is sarcastic. The quotation establishes friendly competition between newcomer Lambert and old pro Chandler.

Each mystery begins as a search for a missing person. In The Little Sister, Marlowe is looking for his client's brother. Whitney Logan is hired to find an illegal immigrant maid.

Each story spins a web of intrigue involving the movie business, drugs and murder. In each, the glittering and dangerous city of Los Angeles is ever-present in the detective's mind:

Marlowe: "I smelled Los Angeles before I got to it. It smelled stale and old like a living room that had been closed too long. But the colored lights fooled you. The lights were wonderful. There ought to be a monument to the man who invented neon lights. Fifteen stories high, solid marble. There's a boy who really made something out of nothing."

Logan: "Punks. Streetwalkers. Palms shimmering in neon. All-night markets carved with foreign words. Everything was a blur. It was a quiet Monday night on the Boulevard. Quietly simmering, on edge. The way the city seems to get premenstrual before the Santa Anas start."

But this book is no clone of Chandler.

In the fast-paced plot, the missing-maid mystery leads hungry young lawyer-turned-sleuth Logan to radical Central American politics, and to a string of sometimes comic, sometimes dangerous characters who knew the missing woman.

The writing is deft. Except for the finale, when the politics get hyperearnest and the plotting a little plodding, the formula works. We want to know more.

As the mystery unfolds, a feminist theme takes shape. Logan gets help from an unlikely volunteer: Lupe, a star-struck prostitute who amuses herself by dressing for the roles of vintage screen idols and reciting their lines.

The women become partners. After an incident of sexual violence, they find they have a personal score to settle. Lesbian innuendos abound. This may be the book's most intriguing mystery.

Hard-boiled lady detectives are in vogue. Does Whitney Logan belong to the sorority?

On one hand, she's tough enough to thrive on the stretches and squats of her training program at legendary Gold's Gym in Venice. She prides herself on being professionally macho, and seems capable of downing shots of liquor with the likes of Marlowe.

On the other hand, this is a woman whose prized possessions are spectator pumps in assorted colors and opera-length pearls.

When she manhandles a bad guy, it's not convincing. When she has to buy a gun in the dingy Los Angeles district known as Dogtown, she dreads the moment as a free fall from innocence.

Whitney Logan is a rough, tough and likable cream puff. But hard-boiled? Raymond Chandler would howl at the idea.