By Sean Chercover
William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2007. 288 pages, $23.95 paperback
Reviewed by Ann Wiens
“The Spilotros had run afoul of mob bosses for bringing too much heat on the Outfit’s lucrative Las Vegas arm, headed by Anthony ‘The Ant’ Spilotro … Days later, the brothers’ bodies, one on top of the other, were discovered buried in an Indiana cornfield.” So unfolds the lurid tale of some of the most provocative mob—I mean Outfit—murders in Chicago history. It’s a story involving Joey “The Clown” Lombardo, John “Bananas” DiFronzo, Sam “Wings” Carlisi, Louis “The Mooch” Eboli … but wait. That’s the story of the sensational “Family Secrets” trial, and it’s being told as it happens this week on the front page of the Chicago Tribune.
Truth may be stranger than fiction, but if we can take the courtroom testimony being hear against some of the Chicago Outfit’s most notorious figures as truth, then Sean Chercover’s debut novel, Big City, Bad Blood, is spot-on in its depiction of the shrouded world of organized crime in this city. The suspenseful tale is told from the perspective of disillusioned newspaper reporter turned small-time private investigator Ray Dudgeon, whose P.I. gigs tend toward surveillance, fraud investigation, and the like. He has a office full of second-hand furniture overlooking the “L” on Wabash (discounted because it’s on the thirteenth floor), and a dingy bachelor’s apartment with a good record collection. He has a girlfriend named Jill, a nurse (convenient later on, when Outfit thugs get the best of him), and a new client named Bob Loniski, a unremarkable Hollywood locations manager who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Loniski hires Dudgeon to protect him from the aforementioned Outfit thugs, who want him dead, and we’re off on a story full of twisting plot lines, colorful good guys and bad guys, and vivid scenes set in the gritty streets of underground Chicago.
Chercover stays true to the detective-novel genre, keeping the reader in suspense, springing surprises here and there, and leading, ultimately, to a not-entirely expected resolution. His language teeters on the brink of cliché, but rarely slips over the edge, and his characters and settings are so richly visualized and well-defined that one easily becomes immersed in this engaging, satisfying novel. And the story’s setting, much of it in Chicago’s South Loop, is an entertaining bonus for Columbia readers. Dudgeon gets take-out spinach pizza at Edwardo’s, drinks at the South Loop Club and Trader Vic’s, and hides his beleaguered client, Bob Loniski, at the Travelodge on the corner of Harrison and Wabash—smack in the middle of Columbia’s campus.
