When I was 12 years old, I got my first job delivering newspapers. I'd awaken at 3 in the morning to carry the Des Moines Register. Those were simpler times. My parents didn't worry about me.

In 1982, a 12-year-old newsboy was delivering the Des Moines Register. Later that morning, his parents started getting phone calls from their son's customers. They hadn't gotten their newpapers. Johnny Gosch never came home.

David Levien opens his new novel, "City of the Sun," with this nightmarish premise. Jamie Gabriel is a 12-year-old newsboy in Indianapolis. He rides off on his bicycle to deliver his paper route. He vanishes.

A few weeks ago I reviewed "Beautiful Children" by Charles Bock and noted that there is now an entire sub-genre of fiction that I call "missing kid lit." "City of the Sun" is another example.

Jamie Gabriel's parents are distraught. The police file away the case as another runaway situation. The Gabriels hire a private investigator, Frank Behr. Levien's hard-boiled Behr is a retired detective haunted by his past.

He is reluctant to take the case. He tells the Gabriels that "if this leads anywhere, it'll be to a horrible place. And you're not prepared for it." He tries to dissuade them. "I may seem like a regular guy," Behr says evenly, "but it's a mask."

Behr dreads where this case will go. He surfs the Internet for clues about pedophiles who might have been involved in Jamie's kidnapping. Jamie's father, Paul, insists on tagging along with Behr as he stakes out potential suspects.

Paul Gabriel is consumed by guilt. "It's my fault, you know. I always believed in a work ethic. That it wouldn't serve him well to have it too easy. It was my idea, his job, delivering papers."

Together, the distraught father and the emotionally wounded detective follow this jagged highway to the darkest possible evil. Levien stokes the suspense with steaming shots of adrenaline. "City of the Sun" churns along with a nerve-bending force to a violent climax. I was left gasping.

Levien is best known as a screenwriter. This novel unspools with a deliberate, cinematic precision. His private eye, Frank Behr reconstructs the crime scene. He finds a witness who provides vital clues. It becomes a fascinating piece of detective work, a chain of obscure bits of information that eventually exposes the culprits and reveals their crimes.

The tunnel that leads to the truth takes this determined duo into the underworld. "The night was dark black. Whatever street lamps there were in the town must have been uniformly broken or extinguished at a set time, as none of then threw any light."

We seek the light. I worked for a time in an office building in Des Moines. The mother of the missing newsboy worked in my building. One day by chance the two of us were in the elevator together. She looked at me. I'll never forget the look in her eyes.

Book reviewer Vick Mickunas blogs daily about books at www.DaytonDailyNews.com/booknook. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 2/25/08; 1:50:04 PM
from the dept.