Book excerpt: 'Midnight Alley's' dispirited messenger of death

When a police detective has to tell a mother that her child has died, he should be Machiavellian about it — that's the lesson Ash Levine describes in "Midnight Alley" (Oceanview: 285 pp., $25.95), the second in a thriller series by former Times reporter Miles Corwin. When the bodies of two young black men are found in a Venice alleyway, Ash is called in to solve the case because it's highly sensitive: One of the two victims is the son of an L.A. City Councilman who's extremely critical of the LAPD. In the following excerpt, Ash describes how the search for clues begins with the victims' families — and this causes him to reflect on how he handles the most dreaded part of his job.

August 12, 2012