Review: Chicago: A Novel of Prohibition

Chicago: A Novel of Prohibition by David Mamet
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

The kind of writing you’d expect from the author of “Glengarry Glen Ross”, with plenty of play-like dialog, where timing and the way words sound together are very important, and you run across occasional monologues. And as you’d expect from a book called “Chicago” from an author known for Chicago ties, you get plenty of tastes of the city. And while this is a period story from right after WWI, Mamet drops plenty of well-known names, including an extended bit on Bessie Coleman, many well known street names, and more. My personal favorite mention was of Chicago neighborhood Hegewisch, where my wife grew up, as the swampy spot to dispose of murdered corpses. That and the Fox River duck hunting story that starts the book were excellent. These Chicago references on reflection seem a bit gratuitous, not really key to the story and chosen for that flicker of recognition they provided. The story was OK for a mystery, although it went on some tangents that I couldn’t always keep straight. The treasure of the book was not so much the story as the occasional sentence or paragraph or scene that just stood out.

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