Signature Kill

There’s a killer lose on the bleak streets of downtown Indianapolis, not just another serial killer haunting the urban night, this is an artist in death. A meticulous planner of atrocities addicted to his chosen crime and like any addict constantly in search of an ever more intense high.

Enter Frank Behr, an ex-cop and sometime private eye down on his luck and estranged from his family. The possibility of securing a large reward for information about a missing woman brings him into the hunt for a killer that will push him to the limit.

Signature Kill is some way above the usual run of serial killer thrillers, David Levien has managed to get deep under the skin of the sort of man who will kill and kill again unless stopped. Along the way he shows his readers an evil that is all too believably mundane; if there is a devil her it really is in the attention to detail.

He also shows an understanding of the damaged heart of America’s rust belt, a place where life is all too often nasty, brutal and short.

In Frank Behr he gives us a sensitive reprise of the man set to hunting killers who is as damaged and brutalised by his life experiences as his quarry. In this instance he is redeemed, mostly, by the presence of his family and his capacity for regret, although the edge of something dark and dangerous is never far away.

Out of what could have been formulaic material David Levien has created something original and unsettling. Along the way he has shown himself capable of combining the craft of the thriller writer with the sensitivity to place and character of a novelist.