The Fifth Floor (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) Review

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The Fifth Floor (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) ReviewIn Harvey's second Chicago noir, ex-cop and private investigator Michael Kelly finds himself knee deep in a scandal that goes all the way back to the infamous Chicago Fire of 1871, and its possible origin as an attempt by two powerful families to eliminate the city's Irish immigrants by burning down the slums. While on a surveillance case tailing an ex-girlfriend's abusive husband (who happens to be one of the mayor's personal hatchet men) in the hopes of discovering something she can use against him, Kelly stumbles upon a murder scene that reaches into Chicago's sordid past, with its money- and power-grabbing elite, and their connection to the city's long-running political machine. Seems that machine is still humming: after digging a little too deeply into the murder he uncovered, Kelly is summoned to City Hall's notorious fifth floor, where he is warned off the case by the mayor himself. Naturally Kelly is undeterred, and things get more complicated and dangerous, with more bodies turning up and an attempted frame-up of Kelly for the crimes. P.I. Michael Kelly is a wonderfully flawed but honorable character created by a talented noir stylist, and his tenacious efforts to expose the wrongdoings of Chicago's most ruthlessly powerful and respected citizens keep you rooting for the this appealing underdog. Extra points for the colorful hardboiled dialogue.
Also recommended: A Stranger Lies There- a superior desert-noir set in Palm Springs, it won the Malice Domestic Award for best first mystery.
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Chicago Blues (Mysteries & Horror) Review

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Chicago Blues (Mysteries & Horror) ReviewHugh Holton has created an excellent Chicago based story that weaves in at least 3 main story lines with at least 3 more sub stories. I currently live in the windy city and it was fun to read the street locations, etc. and know that they did in fact exist and were accurate in their descriptions. I am usually not a fan of the author that tells the story by jumping from one character's view to another character's view but in this case it really works. You understand the psyche of the story teller of the moment and Hugh does an excellent job of tying one lead in to another. In other words you are never left hanging as to why he went from one point of view to another. That's usually where the some author's go wrong when trying to tell a story from multiple viewpoints.
If I had a complaint, mind you this is real small, it's that I would have liked a few more pages devoted to the cop Larry Cole. I suspect Hugh didn't give him more pages because he himself is a cop.
You'll find yourself sympathizing with Reggie,one of the main characters, his upbringing with his grandmother and uncle Ernst and then what the FBI does to him when all he wanted to be was a law abiding cop. Even though Hugh is busy telling you the story straight out you keep second guessing him and you end up surprised in the end. Although Hugh can be forgiven his slight digression of giving away who Reggie's father was so early in the book.
Speaking as one who is easily bored I have to say at every opportunity I had I would pick up this book to read it and managed to finish it in a couple of days. I can't wait to get to his other books.Chicago Blues (Mysteries & Horror) Overview

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Chicago Blues: Portraits and Stories (Music in American Life) Review

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Chicago Blues: Portraits and Stories (Music in American Life) ReviewDavid Whiteis' new book, "Chicago Blues: Portraits and Stories," is a collection of portraits of blues performers and venues that provides a sense of the diversity of the Chicago blues scene with an emphasis on its evolution as a living tradition among the city's African-American community. There are chapters devoted to departed masters to a number of contemporary performers representing a diversity of approaches to the blues, and in the process provides an enlightening overview of a still evolving blues scene and tradition. The portraits are derived from articles that Whiteis wrote for a variety of publications including the Chicago Reader, Juke Blues and Living Blues, and it would be welcome for no other reason than making these available, but the book is more than that.
The first part of Chicago Blues is devoted to Elder Spirits, and includes chapters on Junior Wells, Sunnyland Slim and Big Walter Horton. What is surprising is how little has been written on these three and Whiteis' chapters are welcome for recounting these the lives of these pioneers and masters of the post-war Chicago blues scene. As Whiteis notes, these three mentored him as he developed an knowledge and love of the blues, and his affection for them is obvious as can be gleaned from what he states about Sunnyland Slim, "We weren't what you would call blood brothers. I don't claim to have been his intimate confidant. Nevertheless, I honestly believe that no one else ever taught me so much about life than Sunnyland Slim did. To hear that voice growl through the octaves, build into a liontine roar, and then soar into a leonine roar, and then soar into high-tenor declarations of freedom-bound blues passion -- or just spend time in the presence of this tender-hearted giant of a man -- was to learn life lessons of the most profound and lasting kind."
The Second Part, "We Gon' Pitch a Boogie Woogie!" is an examination of blues venues past and present. There is a chapter on Florence's Lounge, the neighborhood lounge where Hound Dog Taylor and Magic Slim had held regular gigs before they began their years of touring which closed in the ear;y 1980s; the celebrated Maxwell Street Market whose rich history is recounted along with the gentrification of Chicago, expansion of the Chicago campus of Maxwell Street and its destruction of this historical area with a promise of a restored and improved, but ultimately sanitized, area. Whiteis' bittersweet account of the last day of Maxwell Street brings the community that the University destroyed alive for us. The final chapter of this part, Clubbing the Current Chicago Scene, provides sketches of different venues including the Delta Fish Market and its successor, Wallace's Catfish Corner; the Starlite Lounge and the late Harmonica Khan who was a star in this neighborhood juke; and then taking in Denise LaSalle's show at East of the Ryan which includes a nice overview of her career in addition to his perceptive analysis of her oft salty performances that like those of other modern soul and blues artists transcend the dichotomy between sacred and profane.
The Next Part, Torchbearers is in Whiteis' words, "the heart of the book." The portraits of currently active performers who carry on the traditions of the elders. Perhaps these are not all major stylists but each "is representative o the music that remains prevalent on the contemporary scene, and each one's story exemplifies important facets of the `blues life' as it is lived by contemporary artists... ." Chapters devoted to Jody Williams, Bonnie Lee, Billy Branch, Sharon Lewis and Lurrie Bell, give us an insight into their personal histories, the ups and downs they have faced and how they continue to preserve with their art. It is a reminder that blues is more than "just notes" or "just a feeling," devoid of any broader context. Of course, one has to be a bit careful in objecting that the music's cultural history is obscured and challenging the success of some teenage white prodigies while veteran blacks stay in obscurity and then be labeled as an `ignorant racist," as Billy Branch, one of the most eloquent teachers of the blues as well as a blues performer of the highest order. Chapters on Bonnie Lee, who first came up under Sunnyland Slim and later was associated with the late Willie Kent and Sharon Lewis were revelatory about two women who keep doing what they love to do the most, while the chapter on Lurrie Bell detailed the travails of his life as well as his triumphs (musical and personal).
Part IV, The Soul Side of Town, is devoted to Artie `Blues Boy' White (who notes even down south some of the venues he used to play have closed), Cicero Blake and Little Scotty (the later a social activist as well as singer). The book concludes with a Coda, as Whiteis ruminates on the current state of the music and its future, observing that their seem to be new obstacles today to the music surviving, but also reminding us that the blues seems to have this ability to reinvent itself, and its new manifestations and performers may confound us and our expectations what the blues should be, "yet again reveal itself to be a musical language that, once incubated and nurtured in its cultural milieu, can expand its scope and speak to a universal audience."
Chicago Blues: Portraits and Stories, is invaluable for its lively, informative portraits of a variety of performers that help us appreciate aspects of the blues life. Furthermore, it raises significant questions of what the blues is, that goes beyond the current trend of focusing on playing notes and ignoring the culture and community the blues arose out of. As Whiteis reminds us, the music is still deeply rooted there and continues to live and evolve, aiding us to appreciate the music in a deeper and more knowledgeable manner.Chicago Blues: Portraits and Stories (Music in American Life) Overview

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Chicago Blues Review

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Chicago Blues ReviewCHICAGO BLUES
By twenty-one Chicago blues artists.
Edited by Libby Fischer Hellmann
Bleak House Books, October 2007
456 pages, Hardcover, $27.95
Chicago, like most large cities anywhere in the world, is really two or more cities. It exists in different times and sometimes in different universes, even while occupying the same real estate. Daytimes the people of the upper world are there, crowds of shoppers, traffic, wheelers and dealers, the thousands or millions who go busily about their daily lives in the hard sunlight, visible to almost everybody.
Then there's the other city, the one you encounter at night after the sun departs along with the suited workers. This city is a little less crowded, except in the sometimes stifling bars or underground caverns. In this city you'll meet good cops trying to control the violence, and you may brush up against the others, those acquiring their reputations as bad and dangerous boys and girls. In the nighttime you can also meet the scufflers, the dealers, the thugs the killers, and the other slitherers through the night.
There are still other players in Chicago. They are the makers of music, of art, of story. And while they intersect with the rest of the night crawlers, it's often the horn players in the bars and night clubs who lend texture and rhythm to the boozy, bluesy night, to that night thick with desire and trepidation, with humidity and icy winds. This city is sometimes violent in places where the sun never filters in, where dark denizens shun the scrutiny of the day. The urban canyons of Chicago are often dark enough all day long to sustain the underlife, and the river that runs the wrong direction.
Intermingled with the busy daytime traders and the nighttime scufflers are the watchers, the storytellers who observe and remember and write it all down. They go down the dangerous streets and trash-strewn alleys so you don't have to. You can read all about it and experience it at a safer distance, know that frisson of danger, without really getting dirty.
If that's your thing, this is a book for you. If you want to have an up-close experience of the down and dirty blues of Chicago, this is a book you really want to read. Here, collected by astute and talented storytellers who drift through this urban scene, observing, recording, writing it down, are some of the best of the good stories. Twenty one of them, collected and shaped in a single volume aptly named "Chicago Blues." Dark stories of dark deeds, crisply written, sometimes enlightening, most relating tales of unregenerate and occasionally ordinary crime and criminals. Here is the corrupt politician, the vengeful ER nurse, here is history and flashback, here is skin-crawling realism. Life and death in the big city.
I have a tenuous connection with Chicago of an earlier time, of Count Basie and the old Blue Note, of North Clark Street. I have connections with several of the authors represented in this excellent anthology. That said, if you are looking for the true blue essence of the canyons of urban Chicago noir, if you want a sample of the gritty, sticky pavement of crime, of individuals pushed beyond their limits, of the grasping, panting, unredemptive jazz and jive of big city noir, here's a collection that takes hold and grasps and satisfies until the final curtain. This one is a winner, a keeper. This is the blues.
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Chicago Blues as seen from the inside - The Photographs of Raeburn Flerlage Review

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Chicago Blues as seen from the inside - The Photographs of Raeburn Flerlage ReviewI met Flerlage a few years ago in Chicago when I was doing some research for a now-forgotten project and I went through his collection of fantastic photos with him in his apartment and loved every second of it. The composition and lighting in these pictures is beautiful, and he catches something of the energy of the performances that is pretty amazing. Flerlage isn't one of these precious blues prigs (e.g., Steve Calt) who spends all of his time trying to protect some pet thesis and trashing everyone else's work relentlessly, but is a real dude who lived jazz and blues on the South Side in a way that few other writers or photographers have. The result is what you see -- great photographs, on the ground, in the clubs with the people who made the scene as wild and energetic as it was. If you want to see pictures that give you a real taste of the power of jazz and blues in teh 50s and 60s, get this book and linger over these fantastic photographs. You won't regret it.Chicago Blues as seen from the inside - The Photographs of Raeburn Flerlage Overview

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The Chicago Way (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) Review

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The Chicago Way (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) ReviewThis is an entertaining, good book, but the buzz and reviews around it overstate the case a bit. I wouldn't call it great, or classic.
The plot is fairly formulaic, and not just in the sense that it follows the classic 'hard boiled' narrative structure. Readers of fiction in the genre will find that it holds few surprises(Raymond Chandler meets CSI meets David Mamet?). I found the characters to be derivative... for example the ex cop private eye who was wronged AND has a dark secret AND "boxed for money" AND reads the classics. (Marlowe meets Spenser meets Sam Spade meets Poirot?)
The "sense of place" that several reviewers have mentioned positively felt more gimmicky than novel. The setting and the story don't really seem interdependent. The book could have easily been called the Philadelphia Way, the Boston Way, the Brooklyn Way, etc, by changing a few pages of text. By contrast, novels like James Ellroy's "LA Quartet" really couldn't have been sent anywhere else.
I finished the book not really caring about the characters; and possessed of an intense desire to re-read some of the source material.
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