'57, Chicago

THE LINE: Chicago in the mid-fifties. A boxing promoter named Eddie "The Lip" Liprankski and his black fighter Junior "The Hammer" Hamilton. A foxy fur-coat-wearing girlfriend. The Big Fight. Money. Bookies. The fight's fixed. All you need for a noir novel, it would seem, yet '57, Chicago ranks many notches above your run-of-the-mill boxing novel. Monroe writes in a slangy, gritty, knife-edged style that packs a big wallop.

ALSO NOTE: Boxing fiction is a big thing lately (witness the critical and commercial success of F.X. Toole's story collection Rope Burns last year), and Monroe's debut is a welcome addition to the genre. The plot is fairly conventional stuff, but newcomer Monroe's dialogue – and there's a ton of dialogue here – is really good: "'Bounced, shmounced, you fucking circus freak. Throw on a fur coat so some hunter shoots your ass. Better yet, just take off your shirt. You probably look like a bear even without the coat.'"

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