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As bad guys go, the guy in "Where's Billie?" is among the sleaziest.

He's a seemingly respectable man with a responsible job who meets teenage girls at the mall, offers to buy them clothes and eventually lures them into prostitution. Reporter Skeeter Hughes sets out to bust him, and her perseverance makes this debut by Minneapolis writer Judith Yates Borger (Nodin Press, 247 pages, $15.95) a page-turner.

The novel, set in Minneapolis, is the first in a planned series featuring Hughes, a reporter for the Minneapolis Citizen. She has two daughters, ages 11 and 14, and she's married to a reporter for the St. Paul Courier.

When a distraught woman contacts the paper asking for help in locating her missing daughter, 18-year-old Billie, Hughes is told to check it out, and she soon is drawn into a much bigger story. Meanwhile, her home life is falling apart. She never sees her husband, runs out on her kids and relies on a kind upstairs neighbor to help out far too often.

Borger's writing is first-rate, with vivid descriptions such as this one of Minneapolis' Uptown: "Stretching about six blocks along Hennepin Avenue, Uptown is the best place in town to wear anything studded. Micro skirts over black leggings and knee-high boots are de rigueur for women with purple hair while men often sport enough chain metal to make a fence."

She also clearly knows and understands teenage girls. "Most of the girls had that pubescent glow that oozes sex. These were women in the making, soon to acquire the poise and confidence they would need to make the world a better place. In the meantime, their eyes darted around. Surreptitiously, they were checking out the other girls, who were doing the same to them, all trying desperately to appear blasé about everything and everyone around them."

A couple of minor complaints: Borger, a former newspaper reporter, includes many details about newspapers. The descriptions and explanations are true to life, but will most readers really care? Also, Hughes crosses a dangerous line that takes her from reporting on crime to investigating. Real reporters would not be so foolish. Still, this is fiction and it does make for an exciting story.

Most of the dialogue is realistic, but every now and then something clunks. In this passage, Hughes is talking to Billie's ex-boyfriend, a tough-talking kid who works at a car wash: "She backed out. Said something about some caper she wanted to work on. I didn't want nothin' to do with that kind of [expletive]." Caper? Would he really have said that?

One other point: What's with the name Skeeter? Borger eventually reveals the story behind the nickname, but it comes annoyingly far into the book.

Minor points aside, this is a great debut novel with an intriguing heroine and a thrilling plot. And it ends with a cliffhanger. With luck, we won't have to wait too long for Book Two.

Judy Romanowich Smith is a news designer at the Star Tribune.