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IN THE KEY OF DEATH by Robert S. Levinson

IN THE KEY OF DEATH

by Robert S. Levinson

Pub Date: March 19th, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59414-647-3
Publisher: Five Star/Gale Cengage

In the latest from Levinson (Ask a Dead Man, 2004, etc.), America’s singing sweetheart is gunned down, leaving her ex-cop husband grief-stricken and obsessed.

Two and a half years after a hit man put an end to Katie Sunshine’s “stellar stardom,” Josh Wainwright, former LAPD detective, remains bereft and driven. His life is ruled by a single idea: retribution. He wants the man behind the hit man, the enabler whose identity has always been clear to him. Producer Clyde Davenport was once a rock ’n’ roll giant dubbed Mr. Magic because he could take raw, sometimes unpromising, material and transmute it into platinum. But things changed, the magic became fitful, and talent took off for greener pastures. And therein, Josh has convinced himself, lies a motive for murder—in fact, a dozen of them, each attached to one of the names on Clyde Davenport’s Ingrates List, among them Katie’s. One way or another, Davenport has arranged their deaths, a process Josh believes is ongoing. But Keshawna Keyes, longtime friend and trusted partner, is skeptical. “No proof…No proof at all, Joshua,” she tells him. Readers may find that a fair point.

Stuffed with action, violence, sex, music-business savvy and plot, but not well enough written to be persuasive.