Synopses & Reviews
In the Twenties, a Chicago cop could arrest a man for taking a drink-or just as easily tell him where to buy one. This intricate relationship between law and disorder makes the City of the Big Shoulders the perfect setting for this collection of short detective stories.
Ranging from Howard Browne's private eye Paul Pine, who finds a would-have-been client outside his office-would have been, if the knife hadn't arrived before Pine-to Sara Paretsky's V. (for Victoria) I. Warshawski, who combs the padlocked steel mills on the South Side for a clue to a high-tech crime, the Windy City gumshoes featured here work inside, outside, and around the law. There's malice at the mike in Wrigley Field, a disappearing act in Bughouse Square, and a jazz man who can't quite remember cutting his socialite wife's throat-nor understand why she forgave him.