Where the Dead Lay: A Detective Frank Behr Novel

I was a fan of the first Behr book and couldn't wait for this one to arrive. It didn't disappoint... I read it in two days. Levien writes bad guys as well as anyone out there... they are all so well drawn and conflicted and three-dimensional... I found myself racing through the Behr-centric chapters so I could get back to the Schlegels. If you haven't read the first book yet, buy them both. I'm just disappointed I have to wait a while to see who Frank Behr is going to tangle with next.

Top shelf literary crime fiction from one of the best guys working. Despite a lifetime writing about gambling and vice I'd never heard of Pea Shake houses before reading Levien's book--which was just one of the wonderful surprises this book contains. An outstanding detective tale.

If I could take copies of WHERE THE DEAD LAY, the new Frank Behr novel by David Levien, and thrust one into the hands of every fan of noir fiction I know, I would do it. As he did with the amazing CITY OF THE SUN, Levien has taken Indianapolis --- a city with a benign, even ho-hum reputation --- and cast a light on its dark-alley underbelly by taking his readers on a tour of those places where the buses don't run. Behr, a former Indianapolis cop turned private investigator, is the tour guide; he is a deeply troubled man who tiptoes around the edge of his own sanity even as circumstances seem to constantly conspire to push him over the edge. Within the first few pages of WHERE THE DEAD LAY, Behr finds that Aurelio Santos, his friend and martial arts mentor, has been brutally and senselessly murdered. Behr is obsessed almost as much with the "why" of the murder as with the "who," given that Santos appeared to have no real enemies, at least none capable of killing him. Behr attempts to clear the decks of his PI work in order to devote his full attention to his friend's death. However, circumstances conspire against him. A high-powered investigation firm with a national reputation wants to retain Behr for the purpose of determining the fate of two of its operatives who have suddenly gone missing. Behr initially declines, at least until he receives some encouragement from an unexpected source: Captain Pomeroy of the Indianapolis P.D., Behr's former boss and the man who holds the keys to his potential reinstatement on the force. Behr's involvement in the case draws him slowly but steadily into the path of the Schlegels, a chilling family of criminals comprised of a father and three sons who combine a brutal intelligence with an animal cunning and a casual cruelty. It is Terry, the father, who has a plan to take over a segment of illicit activity in the vacant houses of the back streets of Indianapolis and who utilizes his sons as the instrumentality to make it happen, all from the interior of their bar, a quasi-legitimate business where any threat is laid to rest quickly and explosively. Unknown to Terry, two of his sons have an independent entrepreneurial inclination that will have the potential to either make the Schlegels extremely wealthy or tear them apart. And as Behr's sights begin to close in on the Schlegels, he realizes that he is working not two cases, but one. David Levien is a marvel. His dialogue is straight-up, so street that it's a wonder the pages aren't coated with grit. His descriptions are true to life, real and unflinching, a combination of Mickey Spillane, Wallace Stroby and Richard Stark, but nonetheless all Levien. And Behr is as real a dead-end, conflicted character as you are likely to find. Those who read the critically acclaimed CITY OF THE SUN will find even more to love in this unflinching yet roughly poetic account of street-level bangers who are off the radar of most people yet who hover just around the corner. -

What an exciting discovery David Levien has turned out to be for this reader. His "City Of The Sun" was a masterful and disturbing debut novel and "Where The Dead Lay" proves that that effort was just the beginning of a long and very promising career for Levien and his signature character, Frank Behr. Behr is a brooding, conflicted, yet compassionate ex-cop turned PI who is seeking to lay his past to rest in order to truly begin living his life fully again. Indeed, his character is so well written, fleshed, and real that the plot is often secondary to his inner struggles to do the right thing at the right time. He is a bear of a man and a gritty street fighter trained in mixed martial arts yet these qualities do not serve to help him deal with his inner demons. In "Where The Dead Lay", Levien involves Behr in two separate cases that converge sooner than later into a single stunning case that will require all Behr's training, experience, and intuition to not only solve, but to survive. Initially Frank's close friend and Brazilian martial arts master is killed in a seeming execution at his studio. Feeling personally affronted, Frank moves to solve the case on his own time. Almost concurrently, a high powered PI firm asks for his help in finding two of their operatives who have gone missing. When Behr turns them down, his old boss and nemesis, Captain Pomeroy, leans on him to get involved. These two cases ultimately throw Frank into a desperate life and death struggle with the Schlegels, a ruthless, violent, amoral family preying on the innocent (and the not-so-innocent) with no conscience or remorse as they attempt to gain control of an underground gambling enterprise in Indianapolis among other criminal pursuits. The ruthless Schlegel crime family is so realistically portrayed that the reader will shiver involuntarily at times. There is a sub plot involving his girl friend, Susan, that will leave the reader wondering quizzically at the end. Levien has a gift for incorporating humanity and human emotions into the hard boiled noir world of Frank Behr. His characters are real, credible, and possess the depth needed to get the reader to quickly wonder about them and care about them. His pacing is at times breathless but never without including the human element of the protagonist. His plots are real, entertaining, and remarkably fresh. I unequivocally recommend this book and series to any fan of the hard-boiled thriller genre.

This is one of the best crime novels I have read. I thought author David Levien's debut novel, City of the Sun, was good, but this is much better. It's about Frank Behr, former Indianapolis P.D. detective, who was wrongly booted off the force. Now he's a P.I. with a small, struggling practice. The book opens when Behr finds the shotgunned body of his friend and Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor, Aurelio Santos. Behr vows to find the killer(s) on his own time. A major private investigation agency hires him to find two missing operatives; seems the firm doesn't trust its own people to do the job. Indeed, the IPD pressures Behr to get involved; Behr is still respected by many on the force. Meanwhile, a brutal father, Terry Schlegel, uses his three sons (ages eighteen to twenty-two) as muscle in his attempt to corner the Indianapolis "pea shake" racket. The violent Schlegels are just a few of the lowlives that Levien weaves into the story. Pea shake is an illegal lottery, apparently unique to Indianapolis, in which numbers are painted on plastic balls (or "peas"), shaken, and released from a container to determine the winners. It's played in "parlors" that are set up in houses and apartments scattered throughout the city, often in blighted neighborhoods. The players hang around, drink, and wait for an attractive young woman (that's part of it) to do the "shake." So, there's almost instant gratification or frustration. The players can bet anything from pocket change up to hundreds of dollars. It's not regulated, so there are many scams. Levien doesn't really look much at the game itself. I feel there's a lot of potential there. There's plenty of action as the Santos/missing agents/Schlegel story lines converge. Behr comes off as a clean, honest man in a scummy, corrupt world. Behr has compassion, and he considers the impact of his deeds. Most of the other characters in the book are greedy, shallow, and amoral. Behr is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu master and a gritty street fighter. He needs these skills to survive some tough battles, which Levien graphically describes. Levien deftly looks at the seedy side of Indianapolis, a major city that has somehow flown under crime fiction radar.