Customer Reviews

City of the Sun

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In many ways, this compelling debut by David Levien is a retelling of the John Ford/John Wayne classic.

In "The Searchers", a young girl is kidnapped by raiding Commanches, and an aging ex-Texas Ranger -- aided by her adoptive brother -- tracks her down through the underbelly of Texas, their own contentious relationship turning into a partnership of mutual respect along the way.

In "City of the Sun", a young boy is kidnapped, and an aging ex-cop -- aided by the boy's father -- tracks him down through the sub rosa world of sex slavery, their own strained relationship turning into a partnership of mutual respect along the way.

"The Searchers" was a classic, and "City of the Sun" ably steps into those shoes as a literary retelling of a story with such raw emotional power.

The characters are fully three-dimensional and believable; you can feel the anguish and torment of the parents as their marriage slowly disintegrates in the aftermath of the kidnapping, and they desperately hope for the best while slowly growing to accept that their son has died, with all the attendant self-blame and guilt.

Frank Behr, the ex-cop, is meanwhile trying to deal with his own demons, and come to terms with the death of his own young son many years before.

A novel of complexity and great depth, written in a fluid and fast-paced style, this is a very solid five-star performance.

According to the flyleaf, this is the debut of a series featuring Behr; if so, I eagerly await the next installment.

CITY OF THE SUN is a fantastic work of fiction. You realize this within the first few sentences, the ones that sink hooks into your brain with every letter. These letters coalesce into words, sentences and paragraphs, and before you know it, the night is gone and the book is done. You're still on the edge of your seat, and your eyes are bleary (maybe a little wet, too).

Though this is not David Levien's first novel, he has been known primarily as a screenwriter. You may have seen his work on the film Ocean's 13, the television show "Tilt" and a number of other successful projects. None of what has gone before, however, will prepare you for this stark tale of good versus evil in its most basic form.

What Levien does is create a perfect modern noir tale around Frank Behr, a damaged, quietly bent ex-cop turned private detective whose people skills are somewhat lacking but whose strength and courage seem inexhaustible. Behr is based in Indianapolis, hardly a city one thinks of as being a hotbed of danger. But Levien transforms it into a fearsome locale within a few pages, with one simple yet horrific act: the disappearance of 12-year-old Jamie Gabriel while he is on his early morning paper route. The author gives the reader just enough to know that Jamie is in a very bad, if unknown, place. Unfortunately his parents, Paul and Carol, don't even possess that much knowledge.

With no trace of Jamie more than a year after his abduction, and a lackluster police investigation, the Gabriels turn to Behr, who reluctantly agrees to take the case. Still, he informs them that they must work from the assumption that their son is dead. His investigative technique is plodding, even boring, and as realistic as it gets: he waits, makes wrong turns and right moves, good guesses and bad mistakes.

One thing leads to another. Behr begins with a simple yet ingenious question, pursues it to the end, and then begins again. And again. His technique involves much more than kicking over rocks; he is slower, more deliberate and thoughtful. Since he knows in his own heart what happened to Jamie, there is no need to rush. His technique with the unwilling, on the other hand, is worth the price of admission all by itself. Behr also breaks his own immutable rule and allows Paul to join him in the investigation, an act that permits the men to form a solid if initially uneasy bond as they slowly but doggedly follow a long and deadly trail that leads to the answer regarding Jamie's fate.

CITY OF THE SUN is one of those novels that will keep you up for several nights running. You will read it the first night and then spend a few more thinking. I can't wait for Levien's next project!

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Hard knuckled P.I. Frank Behr reluctantly agrees to help Paul and Carol Gabriel search for their son Jamie, who has been missing for over a year.

Frank knows that the chances of finding Jamie are slim. He tells the Gabriels that even if they do find where the thirteen year old boy is, they might not find him alive.

Jamie never returned from his job of delivering newspapers. He loved being on his new bike and Frank uses this knowledge to get his first clue. He is able to contact one of his old snitches and gets the name of someone who used to steal children's bikes and resell them.

As the case moves forward, Paul Gabriel feels compelled to be doing something himself to aid in finding his son. He pleads with Frank to allow him to join Frank in the next part of the case. Maybe because Frank had lost a son himself, he breaks one of his cardinal rules and lets Paul join him.

The reader follows this dramatic story as the investigators get a lead and then something stands in the way of further success. It is like peeling an onion, a little at a time.

The novel shows a parent's faith and family love. The Gabriel's never give up and their faith holds them together. The story is well plotted with realistic characters and moves well with suspense that maintains the reader's interest.

When thirteen-year-old Jamie Gabriel disappears while delivering his early morning paper route, his upwardly mobile parents, Paul and Carol, think at first he must have left early for school. With hard graphic certainty, the reader knows otherwise. Jamie has become the victim of a child prostitution ring.

What follows for the parents is an exercise in depression as days, then weeks go by and the police learn nothing. Oh, they're polite enough, but bottom line - they think Jamie is a runaway.

Fourteen months pass. The Gabriel's have tried two private investigators. The police haven't logged two hours on the case in over a year. Paul and Carol? Their missing son hangs between them like a burning cross. Most couples who lose a child end up divorcing. They're on track.

Enter Frank Behr. Former police officer now private investigator. At 14 months, Frank knows how hopeless this case is, but he's carrying his own luggage and it too involves a lost son. Despite his better judgement, he knows he wants the case, and it will not only be that, it will be a rescue of another sort too - a marriage.

City of the Sun's redemption plot takes on one of the oldest and most taboo perversions, sex with children, in this case, boys. There are men who will do anything for it, and City of the Sun is filled with the people who help them succeed. This novel is gritty, harsh, every adjective you've ever heard applied to the genre, but there's heart as well. Heart in the struggles of Paul and Carol to hold on, and in Behr's reflections on his past failures. The boy's fate? Hey, download your own copy.

Art Tirrell is the author of the 2007 adventure novel The Secret Ever Keeps set on and under the waters of Lake Ontario.

"simply put...the best underwater scenes I've ever read." M. Westley

Twelve-year-old Jamie Gabriel lives a completely normal life. His dad sells insurance, his mom is a stay-at-home mother, and he has a paper route which he rides on his bike. It's all very mundane and average, in suburban Indianapolis, right down to the day that he sets out to ride his paper route and never gets to school, or back home at the end of the day. Paul and Carol Gabriel, the parents, are frantic at first, but as it becomes apparent that the police are essentially not going to strain themselves to find what they consider a runaway, their emotions turn to anger and frustration.

After a little more than a year, Paul hears about private detective Frank Behr, who used to work on the local police department. Behr has demons of his own, baggage that he carries that has dented his personality pretty badly, but once he takes the case he doggedly follows the thinnest of leads, searching for clues and discovering information that the police haven't even imagined existed. As he works his way through the case, Paul wants to help, and eventually Frank allows him to.

I found this to be one of the better detective novels I've read in recent years, certainly the best among debuts. It's suspenseful, intelligent, and full of interesting characters, and the plot just rolls right along. I enjoyed City of the Sun a great deal, and I recommend it highly. A great first book.

This book is an explosive corker... I ripped through it in two days. Levien knows how to make you race through pages, ratcheting up the suspense with each new revelation. But it's his characters that really pop... you feel every emotion they're feeling and are entirely invested in their struggles.

I loved it... it's the perfect airplane book. Behr is a character who will be around for a long time.

Though this was a good read and I don't regret having picked it up, ultimately there was just something.... lacking. The premise is obviously a gripping one - child disappears while on paper route and the parents' attempts, with the help of PI Frank Behr, to find out what happened - but the way it unfolds is rushed and somewhat hackneyed (perhaps reflecting the author's screenwriting background).

The early scenes between the husband and wife post disappearance are well done, but later scenes with just the wife come across as afterthoughts or throwaways. As does, in fact, the presence of many of the secondary characters, especially Behr's former boss at the police department. It was as if Levien was following some formula that "required" there to be a petty, semi-competent, vindictive authority figure for his lead to bang heads with. The romantic aside was equally by-the-numbers and forced. If this is indeed to be a series, there will be more than enough time to delve into Behr's romantic / social life.

Frank Behr definitely has promise as a series lead, but I believe the comparisons reviewers have been making to Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch and Robert Crais' Elvis Cole are a bit premature. A better comparison in my opinion would be Lee Child's Jack Reacher (complete with Behr's 6'6" size), though Behr has in no way proven himself (yet) to be as emotionally complex or intellectually sharp as Reacher.

The bottom line is that Behr simply did not have enough of a chance to shine in this book, with the secondary characters taking up more space than necessary, at the expense of Behr's development. I hope next time out Levien trims the excess character baggage and lets us really get to know our intended hero.

Having just finished this book, the raves on the book's jacket were certainly justified. More than just a mystery, the story poignantly targets and depicts one of the worst fears of parenthood- a missing child. Through his vivid writing, Levien accomplishes the rare feat of dually describing the suffering and alientation one feels from having an absent child coupled with the harrowing search for the child. His characters are well-drawn to the point of allowing the reader to identify with their plights and the personal demons they struggle to exorcise. All in all, a terrific book and I eagerly await further books from this author.

With a blurb by Harlan Coben (whose work I found deplorable, amateurish, and possessing the hallmarks of a lazy writer who is confident his name alone will ensure sales), I nearly left this book in the library. In many ways I wish I had, but it is not so poor as to warrant contempt.

A boy on his paper round disappears, leaving grieving parents who eventually turn to a private detective for help after apathetic and obviously incompetent police fail to show even a modicum of professionalism. Of course, the detective makes near-instant headway. And thus begins a journey.

There are some serious flaws in this book - flaws my teachers would not let pass in my own writing. Initially, the book was written in present tense, a difficult medium to persevere with and master (find Richard Lunn's sensational Feast of All Souls to find out how it should be done) and then shifts abruptly into past tense for the remainder of the book. Surely no editor (or even writer) who cares for a work could have let this pass by? Then paragraphs shift point of view in mid-stream, seriously throwing-off the rhythm of reading. But perhaps the book was not edited at all, for partway through, one of the characters sees his assets as "speed and quickness." I do not wish to be unduly pedantic, but these two words will mean the same thing to most readers.

But it is the characterisations (raved about by Coben) that so fail to pass muster that harm the book most of all. Several are badly cliched (and perhaps this can be blamed on Levien's main employer, Hollywood) and unconvincing, like the volatile sadist Rooster, the private detective Behr who is a huge man and therefore somewhat socially inept and of course, what should have been the antagonist, Riggi. There are others, but it is best left to the reading to see how little imagination has been spent on them.

This leads to discussions of who the main characters were. The husband (Paul), his wife (Carol), and Behr (the private detective), all received lavish amounts of time and the story is told from their perspective from time to time. So, no clear protagonist, and as it happens, no clear antagonist, for several receive a fair amount of attention. It could be argued that in real life, such a tale would have a trail of its own and characters would rise to prominence and then decline into the background. But this is a work of fiction and must be structured as such.

A more skilled writer too would have taken the opportunity to really bring to the forefront of the reader's mind the plight of parents, the difficulties of the authorities, and important statistics regarding child disappearances. Sadly, Levien misses this mark too, for these topics are given too little time although there is mention made of the impact on Paul's and Carol's marriage, and the police are (wrongly, in my opinion) portrayed as apathetic and inept.

In giving it two stars, I have to say there was some merit in the book: the climax was handled at least reasonably well, and the pace was very good. That is where the compliments end. It is a mystery to me why so much of this type of fiction is so poorly written. It seems that for every Crais, Child, Eisler, and McDermid there are dozens who are unworthy.

Levien's descriptive prose was without real flair, although he made attempts at bringing an original voice to the writing. These attempts often failed for this reader, but may resonate with others. So too, tension was often lacking. And has Levien ever heard of active writing? Too much of the action was written in a passive voice - again , this is something my lecturers taught me to avoid to the benefit of my own writing.

So in the end, there is a book worth reading if your library has it, but it is certainly not one that deserves a place on my or anyone else's bookshelf.

I don't understand the positive reviews. Compared to other books of this genre, the suspense is not there, the writing is amateurish and the characters are unbelievable. Frank Behr (the hero detective) is so stereotypical that it erases any depth he might have. The book is filled with cliches that are both typical and unrealistic. I only finished the book because I spent money on it--I really didn't care what happened in the end, and after reading what happened, I still don't care.