Blurb:
Chicago runs in Jules
Landau’s veins. So does the blood of crooks. Now Jules is going legit as a
private eye, stalking bail jumpers and cheating spouses—until he gets his first
big case. Unfortunately, the client is his ex-con father, and the job is finding
the killer of a man whom Jules loved like family. Why did someone put two
bullets in the head of gentle bookkeeper Charles Snook? Jules is determined to
find out, even if the search takes him to perilous places he never wanted to
go.
Snooky, as he was affectionately
known, had a knack for turning dirty dollars clean, with clients ranging from
humble shop owners to sharp-dressed mobsters. As Jules retraces Snooky’s last
days, he crosses paths with a way-too-eager detective, a gorgeous and
perplexing tattoo artist, a silver-haired university administrator with a kinky
side, and a crusading journalist. Exposing one dirty secret after another, the
PI is on a dangerous learning curve. And, at the top of that curve, a killer
readies to strike again.
Review:
I think I can say
Chicago runs in my blood, too, having been born at Cook County Hospital and
raised on the Northwest Side. That’s in the city, not in the suburbs. I always
have a bit of steam come out of my ears when I tell people I’m from the
Northwest Side and they say, “So am I. I’m from Mount Prospect.” Or Park Ridge.
Or Arlington Heights. I try to smile while pointing out those are burbs, not Sides.
Anyway, I’m attracted to
books that take place in Chicago. I think my parents took me down to Maxwell
Street once or twice on a Sunday after church when I was a kid. It was kind of
like a big, outdoor rummage sale. You could get anything and everything
inexpensively and there were hotdog vendors on the street. Some of them have
now gone indoors and become franchises.
Maxwell
Street Blues doesn’t
exactly take place on Maxwell Street. That area is on the fringes of the
University of Illinois Chicago campus and apparently is a “neighborhood in
transition.” The students, faculty, and accompanying upper class are starting
to turn industrial buildings into lofts and push out the druggies, pimps,
prostitutes and gang-bangers who inhabited that strip between the time the
market closed and the University sprawled south of Roosevelt Road. (Mayor
Richard M. Daley’s condo near 1400 South Michigan probably helped spur that
growth.) And it’s on a University construction site on Maxwell Street that
Snooky’s body is found.
Jules Landau takes the
case not because there’s much love lost between him and his father, but because
Snooky was like a big brother to him, and he wants to find out who killed the
guy and why. Snook was a money launderer and a good one, and you don’t kill the
guy who’s keeping your money clean. There had to be something else going on,
and Jules sets out to discover what that was. Of course, there are people who
don’t want him to figure it out and he spends much of the book popping
acetaminophen and nursing black eyes and broken ribs, which, as he points out, “don’t
heal in four hours.” In that regard, he’s a bit like another of my favorite Chicago
PIs, Harry Dresden (without the magic, of course). But Jules doggedly
perseveres, tracking down each lead or whisp of one.
It’s a complex,
convoluted, jumbled-up case and it kept me guessing just exactly who, what, and
why until the end. I hope these books will be on audio when I can afford to
rejoin Audible so I can listen to them while working puzzles when I’m unwinding
before bed. That’s the only way I get to do any real fan-girl leisure reading
these days. And I’ve become a fan of Jules Landau. You will, too, when you read
Maxwell Street Blues.
Length:
245 Pages
Price
Digital: $2.99
Thanks for visiting. Rose
& Rochelle
No comments:
Post a Comment