Allan Levine

by Allan Levine
...
This is the explosive and colorful background upon which Allan Levine pegs his smart, ambitious new novel, The Bolshevik's Revenge.
...
To his credit, Levine allows Sam to look harshly and with a fair amount of cynicism at all sides of the strike question.
...
But by attempting to blend every interesting element of the era and this strike into his fiction, Levine sometimes leaves us short.A case in a point: His effort to weave the then-popular eugenics movement into the fabric of his story is an adroit, perhaps even daring move, and in fact it adds serious oomph to the novel's disturbing prologue and chilling, bitter twist of an ending.
...
Jumping from scene to scene, ranging all over the city, Levine puts Sam through his paces, using an occasionally didactic tone, like a bored teacher reciting from his notes.
...
While I'm not suggesting that Levine should have turned this into a prairie version of Martin Scorsese's bloody, over-the-top Gangs of New York, a little more passion in these pages could have gone a long way.
...
Predating (at least fictionally) the appearance of John Carroll Daly's Race Williams and Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op (and yet conjuring up Hammett's own conflicted past with the Pinkerton Detective Agency, employees of which were often hired as strikebreakers), Levine gives us a captivating and colorful portrayal of an early private detective, years before Hammett, Raymond Chandler and a thousand books, films and TV shows nailed the image to the wall.