A little while ago I reviewed Adam Langer’s review of Michael Harvey’s The Chicago Way. Langer said that the book didn’t work because it didn’t have a strong sense of place; I said that maybe no sense of place is the new sense of place. (I thought the book didn’t work either, but for different reasons.)
Anyway, while catching up on some of the magazines lying around my apartment, I read what Mike Newirth had to say in Time Out Chicago (”If the gumshoe fits…“). He felt the book “captures the city’s rough vitality across the spectrum, from a tense society benefit at the Drake to the bada-bing jokers haunting River North’s Mr. Beef.”
Furthermore, he writes:
Harvey grounds his debut in the plausible, visceral details of Chicago: the wind and weather, the political foibles that can make or murder careers, the lonely forensics labs and superannuated station houses of the CPD. It was as a journalist that Harvey fell in love with the city’s secret rhythms.
Hey, if you want four opinions, ask three book reviewers.
