THE EVIL DEEDS WE DO

A relentless prosecutor, a power-loving political aide and a desperate record producer form a dangerous triangle.

Lainie Davies Gardner is a former street urchin who made it big, married a minor mobster and saw him shot to death. Though she had been indicted on 24 counts of unlawful business activities along with her husband, the charges were dropped after his murder. Once she was president of Blue Pacific Records and lived in a big house in Encino, California; now she lives in a small apartment and tries to keep her teenage daughter on a straighter path than she was on at that age. When Harry Roman, an assistant district attorney who's determined to convict Lainie for hiring her husband’s killer, starts haunting her, she tries to convince herself he has nothing on her. Then Thom Newberry, her former lover and mentor/tormentor from her days on the street, warns her that Roman has new information from someone who claims Lainie gave her the shooting contract. Newberry, now the influential lieutenant to a mayor on his way to the governor’s mansion in Sacramento, has an elaborate scheme for Lainie to ingratiate herself with a powerful international businessman and get him to back her in a new recording company, all so she can find out what’s being hidden in an off-limits area. Her old production team, a promising new singer and an Australian movie producer help Lainie work her way back into the business. But with the threat of indictment for murder over her head and Hurricane Harry at her heels, Lainie is playing a game that becomes increasingly dangerous—and makes it harder to keep a secret of her own.

Levinson’s (Finders, Keepers, Losers, Weepers, 2014, etc.) herky-jerky narration alternates between suspenseful buildups and elaborate back stories in a ruthless world in which no one is to be trusted, the author least of all.