A new thriller series I discovered is Chuck Dixon‘s Levon Cade series. At this time, there are a dozen novels in it, and I’ve read the first 10. I would recommend people read the series in order, as events in earlier stories impact later volumes, and some are linked.
For those not aware, Chuck Dixon is a long-time comic book writer who has worked on various characters at several publishers. I’ve read his stuff on Eclipse Comics’ Airboy series, but he has also worked on The Punisher, Batman, and other characters and titles. He also wrote an excellent comic book adaptation of Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
When I heard of this series, it was loosely described as “a former military man who used to be a black-ops soldier, now finds himself using those skills.” Another description compared him to Jack Reacher, another ex-military character that I’ve enjoyed reading. But neither description does the series justice. I would also describe the series as “New Pulp”, as the stories are stripped down. It’s mainly action — with little in the way of over-explanation, drawn-out scenes, excess exposition, or the like — which are (or should be) hallmarks of New Pulp-style writing.
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We meet Levon Cade in the first book, Levon’s Trade. We discover he’s working security at a construction site in Alabama, has some unique skills, and has seen some action. Over time, we learn he was working for the U.S. military, but we don’t get the details, but clearly in black ops. He was married, but his wife died of cancer, and he has a 9-year-old daughter. But she is in the custody of his in-laws (wife’s parents). His father-in-law hates him, makes it hard to see his daughter, and is fighting him for custody. As his father is a rich doctor, he has the means to drag it out, while Cade can only hold down a low-paying job.
Then his boss’s daughter goes missing. She’s a student at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Police can’t find anything and try to say she ran away, but his boss doesn’t think so. What little he has figured out is that Cade’s ex-military background may help him. So Cade does take the job, as the extra money will help pay for his custody fight.
He quickly finds that he’s up against a group of Ukrainian criminals, not quite the Russian mafia. He’s trying to find out if the girl is alive and who has her. He takes out several people along the way, but they all deserve it. But we also see that he isn’t invulnerable and can make mistakes when he is captured and they learn his identity.
To protect his daughter, he gets her out and takes her to safety. In the process, we learn more about his background as he contacts two people from his former life for assistance. But in the end, after wrapping up the case, he can’t go back to where he is, so he and his daughter head to Maine for a new life, which leads to the events of the next story.
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As I live in Florida, I enjoyed the references to familiar places around Tampa Bay. The author lives in central Florida, so he should be familiar with the area, too.
The second novel, Levon’s Night, starts with a crime scene in Costa Rica. A family is killed, maybe even tortured. And worse, this included children. The father had run a Ponzi scheme in the U.S., making off with several hundred million dollars. But the killers left behind an open safe with a couple of million in it. Did they find what they were looking for, or will more die?
Then a similar case occurs in Fiji. A Treasury agent who met with an FBI agent on that first case feels it’s the same crew. This group, funded by a mysterious individual, is looking for the scammer’s motherload of money, which is probably hidden in one of his several homes registered under other names.
Meanwhile, Levon and his daughter are living in Maine but in an interior community as winter hits. The area has about a dozen people. But it appears that another of the scammer’s homes is there, and this group is coming. They don’t leave witnesses. But they didn’t account for someone like Levon.
Sadly, Levon and his daughter will need to move on after this and get new IDs. Where will they go next?
Each story is about Cade getting pulled into matters by others and using his skills to take care of things. But he also has a young daughter to look after and protect as well. It is interesting to see how this series progresses. The FBI agent and Treasury agent will re-appear in future novels, but you’ll have to see how that works out. In some ways, it’s similar to certain episodic TV shows where the hero comes to a new town, gets involved in things, and then has to move on.
In a subsequent novel, Cade and his daughter return to his hometown in northern Alabama to live with an uncle. You hope their lives will settle down, but things occur that make that difficult, if not impossible. Cade also makes a journey to war-torn Iraq to repay a debt.
I’ve enjoyed this series and look forward to reading the eleventh and twelfth volumes. I hope we see more. There is talk of a TV series, and I hope it is true to the stories and characters. We’ll see how that goes.
What do you think of Chuck Dixon’s Levon Cade novel series? Leave a comment and let us know.
Hey Pulp. Look at Biker #10, co-starring Levon.