Customer Reviews

Levine

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In the late 50s and early 60s, author Donald E. Westlake, then just getting started, sold four short stories about a mild-mannered police detective named Abe Levine to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Levine's unique angle was that he was acutely aware of his mortality; he's in the habit of compulsively monitoring his own heartbeat and believes himself to be in danger of a heart attack. His fear of death manifests itself as a deep, pitiless rage against those who take the lives of others, and his adventures typically conclude with him expressing this anger, perhaps in an unexpected comment or, in one particularly dark episode, by driving a criminal to suicide. This volume collects all of the Levine stories, including one that Hitchcock wouldn't publish because it didn't really qualify as a mystery and another written especially for this volume. The last two stories are the best, but even when the story itself is weak, Levine's unique take on life maintains a certain level of interest.

For a crime writer who mixed humour as Donald Westlake and violent crime as his alter ego pen name Richard Stark, this book of short stories about an aging NY detective with a heart problem (Abe Levine of the title) provides a very different orbit.

The book comprises several short stories written for crime magazines between 1959 and 1965 with a new closing short story written in 1984 when the book was complied for the excellent Mysterious Press Bookshop in New York. It should fascinate Westlake fans for a number of reasons. The first is it gives an insight of early Westlake writing efforts when he was still developing his overall writing and storytelling styles. After the late 1960s he had pretty well dropped the short story format with only a few later exceptions.

Secondly, one suspects (as admitted in his 1984 written "Introduction"), Westlake found writing these stories that were so different to his normal fare a challenge and they held a special place for him. No wise cracks, no focus on hard boiled criminals but instead a world weary and experienced NY detective, with the emphasis on each tale covering repetitious day to day police work of a variety of cases while Levine frets about his health and the effect of the job on his heart problems.

Westlake wisely recognised that Levine was never going to be a Dortmunder or Parker and so never merited a full novel. His later attempts writing as Tucker Coe about an ex-cop Mitch Tobin did not have any great success and the character was not a Levine in any case. The author's soft spot for these short stories seems to be just because they were so different and the frailties of the lead character. Indeed the twist in each story of Levine acting out of the norm expected in doing his duty is what makes them so well suited to the short story format.

A unique one off offering from a great crime writer.

Six short stories published mostly in the 60s along with an introduction by Westlake on his creation of the Levine character and how he had never written a series before and didn't know how to go about it. He also analyses each story in the introduction which is quite interesting. Fans of the Westlake's comic capers (Levine is not one by the way) will also through the introduction learn how Westlake fell into writing those after a career up to that point of harder crime novels. He mentions how his first comic caper The Fugitive Pigeon turned from a harder crime (under the name The Dead Nephew) into a comic novel as Westlake wrote it. I actually found this fairly lengthy intro to be the best of any Westlake novel where they have appeared and to be honest a bit more interesting than the Levine character stories.

Levine is a detective who is obsessed with death and not so apparent in the first story but in each subsequent one he listens to his heart beat just waiting for the inevitable time it stops. This means as he deals with death every day he is constantly thinking about it and has a completely different, often opposing view on the death of criminals and the need to put in the effort to find the killer.

1st story written 1958, The Best Friend Murder - A student confesses to a cop in a park that he poisoned his roommate, Levine knows something is a miss.

2nd story written 1960, Come Back, Come Back - A suicide jumper (assumed to be a poser by Levine's partner Crawley) is standing six stories up on a ledge outside his office threatening to commit suicide.

3rd story written 1961, The Feel of the Trigger - Convenience store owner shot dead, Levine has to debate within himself the question of if he has it in him to take a life even if it means saving himself or other potential victims.

4th story written 1962 The Sound of Murder, this is by far the best of the short stories. A ten year old girl comes into the precinct and tells Levine that her evil mother murdered her step dad who was recovering from a heart attack by making a loud noise (of course Levine is obsessed with paranoia about his own heart stopping so this hits close to home). She tells him she suspects her mother murdered her biological dad as well. No one else believes her, Levine doesn't know if he should either.

5th story written 1965, The Death of a Bum - A well known criminal is found murdered in his bed. The popular opinion is why put in too much effort to find the killer. Since Levine views all life as so sacred he finds it difficult to put this in the cold case file when he is told to with the growing number of more worthy victims of other crimes that need investigating.

6th 1984 written After I'm gone - Westlake wraps up the series well, not a great stand alone story but if you've read the former ones in this book, it is quite satisfying. A mob guy comes to him telling him he has a hit on his name so will give him information in return for Levine doing some things for him.

Levine is an interesting character but not quite up there with Westlake's other series characters such as Sam Holt, Parker (under the Richard Stark pen name) or Dortmunder. Still these stories are interesting and a must for fans of the late Westlake to check out. However if you've still got a lot of his back catalogue to read I'd get those first.