Signature Kill: A Novel (Frank Behr), by David Levien
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Signature Kill: A Novel (Frank Behr), by David Levien
PDF Ebook Signature Kill: A Novel (Frank Behr), by David Levien
Taut and edgy, Signature Kill is a riveting exploration of a killer next door—a tour de force from acclaimed author David Levien. The quiet of the Indianapolis night is broken when an unidentifiable body is found in a local park, deliberately arranged in such a way that police know it’s not a random crime. Across the city, former cop Frank Behr, down on his luck and virtually broke, takes on a no-win case to locate a desperate mother’s wayward daughter who’s been missing for months. Behr has few friends left on the police force, but as he wades into the world of small-time prostitution from which the daughter disappeared, he comes to believe the two cases are related. When another body is found, it becomes clear Indianapolis has a serial killer on its streets . . . an untraceable predator who, Behr surmises, lives behind the chilling veil of a perfectly normal life. Behr’s pursuit threatens to become entangled in the official police investigation, and will lead him to a dark place—and ultimately to a devastating decision from which he will not be able to turn back. Signature Kill is a masterly novel, in which one man’s obsession with justice faces off against a killer’s all-consuming obsession with perfection.
Signature Kill: A Novel (Frank Behr), by David Levien- Amazon Sales Rank: #861701 in Books
- Published on: 2015-03-24
- Released on: 2015-03-24
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x 1.07" w x 6.37" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 288 pages
Review Praise for SIGNATURE KILL“Arguably the best crime writer in contemporary fiction. . . . [Signature Kill] is as bulletproof as they come.” —The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg)“There's never any doubt that Behr will get his man, but what happens when he does will make your hair stand on end.” —Kirkus Reviews “The truth of [Levien’s] characters—and the intensity of their pain—is as unbearably real as it gets.” —The New York Times Book ReviewAcclaim for David Levien“Levien has placed himself among the best writers in the field.” —Robert Crais “[Levien] infuses his . . . tale with heart-wrenching emotion.” —People“Veteran screenwriter David Levien imagines with icy, almost sadistic precision.” —Entertainment Weekly“Levien has an ear for dialogue that many of us don’t often hear.” —The Indianapolis Star “David Levien is a marvel. . . . His descriptions are true to life, real and unflinching, a combination of Mickey Spillane, Wallace Stroby and Richard Stark, but nonetheless all Levien.” —BookReporter
About the Author David Levien is the author of the Frank Behr novels: Thirteen Million Dollar Pop, Where the Dead Lay, and City of the Sun. He has been nominated for the Edgar, Hammett, and Shamus Awards, and he is also a screenwriter and director. Levien lives in Connecticut.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1Movement in the pin oak on the hillside caught Frank Behr’s eye. He stood hidden in thick trees on a low rise two hundred fifty yards away, scanning the underbrush above the shallow bowl of a meadow. Gray and stealthy, the whitetails picked their way down toward the good feed, and the horizontal lines of their backs broke the vertical pattern of the trees. Behr felt the nerves along the still-healing left side of his collarbone call out in protest as he slowly raised his Remington 870 Express and used the four-by scope to get a better look. The deer were all doe. Even the controlled movement of his lifting the gun was enough to give them pause. They stopped, three of them, their heads perfectly still, save for their ears, the insides twitching white as they rotated around to capture a telltale sound. Behr stood there, gun steady, watching. After a long moment the deer continued, in serpentine fashion, down toward the edge of the meadow. When his arm started to throb, he lowered the gun.Over the next half hour several more doe and a pair of forkies came out of the trees and began their evening graze. Behr waited. He’d been doing this a long time, and he was familiar with the habits of whitetail. The cagey big bucks often let the young ones, and the doe, go first. There was no change for several long minutes until, like a gray ghost of the forest, the senior buck of the herd became visible far up the hill. He was out of range and in the shadows of deep cover.Behr carefully slung his Remington and pulled a pair of old antlers from his belt and began clacking them together. The rut was on, and he hoped to rattle the old boy out into the open looking for a fight. Behr slid a plastic tube up out of his coat and blew a breath into it, causing it to emit a low grunt. He saw the buck look in his direction, but felt the silhouette of his six-and-a-half-foot, two-hundred-forty-plus-pound frame was broken up enough that the buck couldn’t see him. As long as the wind didn’t change, Behr had a chance.The buck picked his way down to the edge of the meadow, stopping behind a brake of prickly ash. Behr gave a final knock and scrape of the antlers, then tucked them into his belt and raised his Remington again, snugging the butt onto his shoulder. The last rattle had caused the buck to lift his head and scent the wind, and Behr finally got a clear look at the old boy’s rack. He was a ten pointer with thick beams and a wide spread. Bramble slightly obscured the shot, but Behr was able to put his crosshairs square on the deer’s chest. He held. If the buck continued into the open and quartered broadside it’d be ideal, but this was a good shot, and one Behr had made before. He clicked the safety off and let out a slow breath, closing the valve on the anticipation and the pity and all other emotion in his chest. When hunting, a cold, clean killing edge is best. He was ready. The ideal time came and went. He should have squeezed. But something made him wait. He watched the deer for a long moment. The moment continued as the buck ticked forward a dozen more steps. Behr felt his mind drift.Trevor. Six months old now, but one day I’ll be standing on a hillside like this with my boy, teaching him the ways of the woods, how to shoot, how to hunt.Behr refocused his eye and the reticle. Then he saw the buck flinch, and a millisecond later the boom of another slug gun echoed off the hillside. The deer in the field scattered, and the old boy’s head whipped to the side and he disappeared into the foliage.The crack of breaking branches and the thick chunking sound of hooves knocking against downed trunks reached Behr in his spot as the buck, hit and hurt, careened heedlessly into the deep timber. Behr waited a few minutes, until he saw the blaze orange of Lester’s cap, atop a suit of Mossy Oak Break-Up pattern, make its way like a bobbing cork above the bramble, then he started down the hill and across the meadow to where he’d seen the buck plunge into the trees.Behr reached the deer first and found him in a clearing, rolled up on his left side, face plowed into a carpet of dead leaves. There was a small hole just behind the shoulder that oozed only a trickle of blood. It was a near-perfect shot. Lester made the clearing seconds later, breathing hard.“Hot damn,” he said over a lip full of Copenhagen when he saw what he’d collected.“Well done, Les,” Behr said and gave him a whack on the shoulder. In his late sixties, Lester Dollaway was the father of one of Behr’s old college football teammates, Des, a reservist who’d died in Afghanistan five years back. The hunting trips had been a long-standing tradition between the three of them, and Behr hadn’t considered ending them just because his friend was gone. That first year when it was just him and Les pulling permits had been difficult. The pain in the older man’s darting black eyes was almost unbearable. Things had gotten easier with each passing year. A native Iowan, Les lived only an hour away from where they were now, and he knew all the landowners and got permission to scout in the spring and hunt in the early winter season.“It’s the last day,” Lester said, taking off his cap and rubbing up his steel wool hair. “I can do this if you want to get on over the hill and look for them forkies or something.”Behr gave some thought to his $400 nonresident antlered deer license that would go unfilled.“Nah, I’ll help you and we can drag him down together.”“It’ll be dark before long,” Les said. “You won’t get a shot.”“Probably not.”“I thank you.”“Want me to dress him?” Behr offered and pulled the drop point skinner off his belt.“If it’s no trouble,” Lester said. “These damn eyes . . .”Behr nodded and removed his coat, then pushed up his shirtsleeves. “Seemed fine when you squeezed off on this old boy.”He rolled the deer onto his back and made the first cut from sternum to crotch, his blade parting the white belly fur and whiter layer of fat beneath it before the red of muscle and blood leapt forth. Once the buck was opened up, Behr reached up into the warmth and wetness of the cavity and removed the organs. After splitting the pelvis, Behr cut the heart free. It came out thick and heavy and purplish in his hand, and he set it off to the side before he tilted the carcass downhill to drain. As the garnet fluid soaked into the dry ground, Behr looked at the battered forehead and broken brow tine on the old buck.“See the Roman nose on this one? He was a fighter,” Lester said.Behr absently rubbed his own nose with his upper arm. Had he not liked his shot? he wondered. He’d made many as difficult and some much more so. Maybe he’d seen too much gunfire recently, or perhaps an awareness of the damage a gun like the one he had brought could do was still just too fresh. He wasn’t sure and it didn’t matter. He hadn’t fired and hadn’t filled his tag after four days of hunting.“Couldn’t believe you didn’t take him before he came on down toward me,” Lester said. “You’re in for some meat after I get him to the butcher.”“Thanks, Les,” Behr said.“Hell, you rattled him right in.”Behr used the remainder of his water bottle to rinse the blood and gore from his hands and forearms. Lots of guys wore rubber gloves when field dressing these days, to prevent picking up infection, but not Behr. It wasn’t how he was taught. And he’d yet to catch a disease from a deer. He couldn’t say the same for people.The sun throbbed crimson and dropped down over the hill, flattening out the light in the meadow to a pale purple as they each took a hind leg and dragged the deer a half mile to Lester’s truck.2It’s happening again . . .The words come from a place deep within him. He feels that stuff down there, bubbling and stirring, as the thing inside him that is other looks to push up and outward. He has to take it for a ride.It’s happening again and before long the red curtain will come down once more . . . Soon.So soon it is almost confusing.He should be at work by now, but he finds himself turning toward Irvington instead. He’ll have to make up the time on his own. His bosses just want results, they care less about his coming and going and being punctual as long as the work gets done. And he has seniority. Besides, he doesn’t know this neighborhood. Yet.The streets are filled with cars this morning as people go to their jobs, the sidewalks populated with mothers and their children on the way to school, along with the occasional jogger bundled in a sweatshirt moving down the road, blowing cold clouds of breath. He rolls along, as slowly as he can without getting in the way, without becoming noticeable.He turns the corner onto East Lowell, and sees a lone woman walking. In her late twenties or early thirties, she has blond hair streaked with light reddish brown the color of ground cinnamon. She isn’t out for a healthful stroll, he can see by the cigarette in her hand and the black leather jacket and jeans that look like they were worn to a bar the night before.Dirty girl, dirty girl . . .He slows, trolling behind her for a bit. She is petite, with a light stride. Young.Go to work. Now. A voice inside tries to instruct him. But it is weak. Certainly not strong enough to win out, and it will soon fall mute.He no longer feels the car around him. All is silent. He is flying, floating along next to her. He is near her, with her, of her . . .Finally, his senses return. The steering wheel is in his hands, the seat beneath him, and the pedals under his feet once again. He speeds up and pulls abreast of her for just a moment before continuing on, her presence and her location filed away automatically in his mind. A certain fluttering sensation arrives in his gut—the one that comes along when he’s found a new project.Hello, Cinnamon . . .
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful. This One Is Not For The Squeamish By TMStyles In "Signature Kill", David Levien brings us his fourth installment featuring Frank Behr and, if you are a fan of this series, do not miss this one. Behr is a fascinating character study who has evolved from a former Indianapolis detective to a less than successful private investigator barely making ends meet. He has always been conflicted with self doubts and demons making his vulnerability all the more fascinating as it wars with his great street smarts, intuition and sense of misplaced justice. Behr is world weary and vulnerable but he is no one to be trifled with.Frank sees a billboard offering a huge reward for a missing girl and he takes the case hoping for a big payday. But quickly he ascertains that this missing girl is perhaps part of a much wider series of missing girls, many of whom have been found in hideously mutilated "presentations" which is the serial killer's "signature". With very few allies left on the police force, Behr enlists the aid of Lisa Mistretta, a criminal psychologist and profiler, Lieutenant Breslau, a very reluctant ally, and Django Quinn, a police photographer, to help him identify the diabolical killer and end his trail ofcarnage.As usual, Behr makes intuitive leaps in assessing the killer while also making missteps in his personal life. He can make great snap dscisions in the field yet be totally tone-deaf making the right personal decisions. Somehow, the killer remains a step ahead of Frank and even identifies Frank's small band of allies promising to take revenge for their interference. Can Frank out think his quarry in time to prevent further deaths, not only of young blond females (the choice of the serial killer), but also of his own allies? And can anything help him save his rapidly deterioratingrelationship with longtime love Susan, the mother of his infant son? These twin questions propel the action toward an ending that will have the reader reluctantly turning pages caught in the grip of a white-knuckle encounter between good and evil that may change Frank Behr forever.Levien is a very fine writer who never disappoints with a character who is both a reluctant hero and a flawed everyman. Levien creates strong characters highlighted by despicable villains and the aforementioned flawed but likable, Frank Behr. In "Signature Kill", Levien frequently alternates point of view passages between Behr and the killer which presents engrossing background and insight for the reader. I strongly recommend this series and this installment.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Fast-paced thriller By L. F. Smith This book is a mystery/thriller, so I don't want to say much about the plot. However, it is a fast-paced thriller that would make it a great vacation or airplane trip read.This is the fourth book in which David Levien has featured Frank Behr, a former cop afflicted with various personal problems who is now working as a private eye. He depends on cooperation from the cops, who don't like him much and threaten him regularly when he interferes with them. If that sounds familiar, it is. This formula has been exploited by many other writers. Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder novels are the gold standard for me. In my view, Levien executes the book well, but he's not quite up to Block's level.Part of the problem for me was that at several key points in the story, the author mentions something that clearly was described in one of the three earlier books, something that has a major impact on Behr's thinking and feelings. Of course, he can't retell the earlier stories, but without some detail, it's impossible to really understand what's going on in Behr's mind. I was left puzzled about why Behr was thinking or doing something and irritated that I'd have to read three other books to find the answer.Another issue for me was the gore factor. The bad guy is a psycho serial killer, and Levien establishes that by ratcheting up the blood and gore. Blood and gore don't bother me that much, but at a certain point, it loses it's power to indicate evil. James Patterson does psycho serial killers very well by making them well rounded characters, not merely by piling up dismembered body parts. I think Levien could learn something from that.Bottom line: I thought the book was well worth reading. It's very fast paced and filled with twists and turns. It's not the best book of its type, but it's definitely a great page-turner.
16 of 20 people found the following review helpful. A bloodfest By Neal Reynolds I don't consider myself especially squeamish, but this was too much for me. Insights into the killer's mind left me feeling dirty and nauseated. The butchery detailed throughout was unnecessary. If your stomach is cast iron or if you glory in gore, you'll like this. Otherwise, do yourself a favor and skip this one.
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