City of the Sun

It's how it happens. One moment a couple is eating breakfast and talking about mundane matters, and the next their lives are destroyed when their only son disappears. David Levien vividly puts the listener in the place of the couple. We know no more than the parents or the private detective, a desperate, damaged man who needs to solve the case for his own sanity. Then there's narrator Scott Brick, an outstanding audio performer who pushes himself a little further this time. He reads with an urgency that reveals his passion for the material. His work magnifies the story, making it impossible to ignore the plight of the parents of young Jamie Gabriel. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Starred review from January 14, 2008
Screenwriter Levien's debut crackles with raw intensity as it hurtles from a placid Indianapolis suburb to a dingy Mexican outpost. Paul and Carol Gabriel are devastated when their 12-year-old son, Jamie, disappears on his paper delivery route one morning. Fourteen months later and with the police no closer to finding Jamie, they hire PI Frank Behr, an imposing ex-cop with a checkered past. Behr soon discovers that Jamie's disappearance was no random grab but part of a larger operation run by Riggi, a real estate tycoon who deals in everything from drugs to stolen children. Reluctantly allowing Paul to accompany him, Behr tracks Riggi's men to Mexico, where he and Paul discover the true extent of Riggi's depravity as they race against the clock to find Jamie. Levien expertly weaves a subplot involving the tragic death of Behr's own young son into the complex kidnapping story, and the moments shared between the two grieving fathers are heartbreaking. Fans of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch will be particularly delighted.