Where the Dead Lay

May 25, 2009
Indianapolis PI Frank Behr juggles two cases in Levien's disjointed follow-up to City of the Sun
. When Behr's Brazilian jujitsu instructor is shot to death execution-style at the Brazilian's martial arts studio, he decides to investigate unofficially. A real job soon comes Behr's way when a high-powered PI firm asks him to track down two of their missing investigators, who disappeared in the middle of a case involving derelict properties being used for illegal gambling dens. In taking a close look at the gaming dens, Behr comes face to face with a family of thugs who have launched a turf war to secure a monopoly on neighborhood crime. Despite the book's hefty body count, Levien is more interested in exploring the nature of violence, contrasting the controlled beauty of jujitsu with the unpredictable dangers of gunfights. While readers will admire Behr's determination to solve his friend's murder, some may feel that case distracts too much from his formal assignment.

June 15, 2009
Indianapolis private eye Frank Behr, who debuted so memorably in City of the Sun (2008), juggles a caseload of felonies that all lead to the same perps.

Martial-arts instructor Aurelio Santos knew how to take care of himself, but he was no match for the man who executed him with a shot through the chin while someone—at least two someones, probably—held him down. The local cops are as confident as Aurelio once was, but Frank, walking in on the crime scene when he arrives early one morning for his private jiu-jitsu lesson, feels responsible for avenging his friend. His sense of mission isn't diminished by his pregnant girlfriend Susan Durrant's pleas to play it safe, or the constant reminders that he's persona non grata in the police department he once called home, or his acceptance of another, paying case searching for two missing operatives for Caro Investigations, a firm too pricey to waste billable hours tracking down its own. Frank's investigation provides several moody, tense scenes with a woman who insists she wasn't Aurelio's girlfriend and some well-muscled fighters who probably didn't love him either. But it doesn't have anything like the intensity of his scorching first case, and the crime family behind the family of crimes—Terry Schlegel and his three boys, determined to put local penny-ante gamblers out of business and replace them with something more centralized and lucrative—is neither as fearsome nor as distinctive as it's meant to be.

A gifted writer's sophomore slump. Wait till next year.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2009
The shotgun murder of Frank Behrs Brazilian jujitsu teacher, Aurelio Santos, hits Behr hard; so hard that when his significant other tells him shes pregnant, Behr seems simply put off by the news. He also brusquely rejects a lucrative assignment from a high-end investigative firm, until an Indianapolis PD captain imposes on him to accept. His assignment is to locate two of the firms operatives who have disappeared. But leads to Aurelios killers are nonexistent, and the high-end firm will tell him nothing about what their ops were investigating. Behr is left blundering around the edges of both investigations while in the midst of an existential crisis that only becomes clear more than halfway through the book. He also finds himself menaced by a Chicago hit man and a family of mad-dog locals determined to control Indys pea shake gambling houses. Leviens first Behr novel (City of the Sun, 2007) was first-rate. With its murky, meandering plot, this one disappoints by comparison, but Behr fans will still enjoy the ride.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)