cover image The Innocence That Kills: A Nate Rosen Mystery

The Innocence That Kills: A Nate Rosen Mystery

Ronald Levitsky. Scribner Book Company, $20 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-684-19707-4

Class conflict and family estrangement give emotional depth to this slow-to-develop Nate Rosen mystery. The trial of two young murderers brings civil rights lawyer Rosen back to Chicago, his childhood home and the current residence of his ex-wife Bess and teenaged daughter Sarah. Shortly after the trial, a girl is murdered in the ritzy suburb of Arbor Shore, where Sarah lives with her mother and stepfather. Dead is Nina Melendez, Sarah's best friend and daughter of the Dominican housekeeper at the Arbor Shore estate of the Ellsworth family. The girls' high school drama teacher, who may have been inappropriately close to his students, seems a prime suspect, but the school dismisses the charges and Nina's family asks Rosen to investigate. Working with Nina's aunt Lucila, Rosen uncovers entanglements within the Ellsworth household, some involving the steely security expert/bodyguard known as Soldier. Levitsky ( The Love That Kills ) effectively contrasts the gritty Dominican inner-city neighborhood with the stultifying secretiveness of Arbor Shore, but his plot proceeds haltingly to a bloody and improbable conclusion. Rosen, as concerned with his relationship with his daughter and his father, who disowned him, as he is with the killing, is an intriguing protagonist who deserves a more compelling narrative. (June)