Run You Down

The plot of Edgar-finalist Dahl’s so-so second novel featuring New York City reporter Rebekah Roberts (after 2014’s Invisible City) is as much about Rebekah’s struggles with the possible reentry into her life of her estranged mother, Aviva Kagan, as it is about her investigation into a suspected homicide. Levi Goldin, whose wife was found dead in a bathtub, disputes the official verdict of suicide, and asks Rebekah to dig deeper. Rebekah is still recovering from the trauma, both physical and mental, of her first mystery involving the ultraorthodox Jewish community, and she soon abandons her current job doing rewrites behind a desk. Flashbacks from the perspective of Aviva, who abandoned her daughter as an infant and who married out of her faith, detail how she rebelled against the strictures of her Jewish upbringing in the very type of community Rebekah now probes. A moving denouement makes up in part for the less than compelling mother-daughter story line and a major plot contrivance. [em]Agent: Stephanie Rostan, Levine Greenberg Literary Agency. (June) [/em]