Rex’s reviews of anything (but mostly books)

Here’s a little hypothetical question for you: what would you do if you happened upon a boatload of cash? What if its rightful owner was beyond caring? What if you really, really felt you needed it? What would a bad person do? What would Good People do?

Our story begins with a robbery and a murder, and then a fruitless trip to a fertility clinic. The robbery at a Chicago nightclub had netted the four perps a bundle of cash, but one of them disappeared with the loot after plugging Bobby Witkowski. Whether it’s the death of his brother or the disappearance of about $400K (along with a satchel full of illicit pharmaceuticals) that most angers Jack Witkowski is probably immaterial: suffice it to say he is greatly pissed.

When Chicagoans Tom and Anna Reed find bundles of hundred dollar bills stashed in the apartment of their recently deceased tenant, it seems like a gift from benevolent gods. They’re up to their ears in credit-card debt and their Lincoln Park conversion is mortgaged to the hilt after a long string a string of unsuccessful in vitro treatments. With their tenant dead and gone and no claimants in sight, however, the Reeds decide to let the childish ditty be their guide: “finders keepers…” becomes their mantra. Problem being that the losers aren’t merely weeping: Jack Witkowski is pretty certain that the young couple know where the cash is, and he is most assuredly Bad People.

And Witkowski isn’t the only dry-eyed loser out there: one very scary-looking Superfly-stylin’ drug dealer is pretty certain that the Reeds know where his pilfered inventory has disappeared to… and a CPD detective has a hunch as well, his about how to break the biggest case of the year and finish his career on a high note. Looks like everyone has major plans for several hundred grand in used bills… Read the rest of this entry »

I am Patti Black. That’s Patricia A. Black, age 38, TAC officer in the Chicago Police Department; the woman some call the most decorated officer in the history of the CPD. That may be so, but sometimes my Sunday afternoon rugby matches feel more important than that shiny career. It’s the “shiny” part that makes me nervous; nervous because it’s only my seventeen years on the force that can shine. No one knows what my life was like in the years that are missing from my application to the academy; no one but me. And then we found the body in the wall: Annabelle Ganz, my foster mother, half of the couple who made my life a living hell. And Annabelle was the “gentle” one… it was Roland Ganz who so casually treated my body, my mind as if they were toys… Roland who fathered the child I gave away at fifteen… Roland whose tender ministrations left my body and mind covered with the kind of scars that would twist the soul of someone weaker… Roland who has re-appeared after twenty-three years to steal the son I gave up, the son I’ve never seen.

He’s not going to get my John. He will die trying and I will be the one who kills him.

Patti Black’s life is about to become Hell on earth, not that Patti hasn’t already seen Hell. Hell was Calumet City, where Roland Ganz – mild-mannered accountant by day, demon incarnate by night – raped and battered the foster children in his care. Hell was twenty-three years ago, but for Patti Black it might as well have been last night. Hell is what made Patti Black the woman she is, a ghetto cop who knows no fear, a loner whose only dependents are a pair of goldfish, an alcoholic seventeen years sober. But then one Monday, it all starts to unravel for Patti Black. Within the next seven days, she will become a suspect in half a dozen murders, her name will be tied to corruption in the CPD, and “Idaho Joe” will put out a contract on her head. She’ll spend a night in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert and face a waterspout on Lake Michigan, find man and beast mutilated beyond recognition. And all that pales in the face of fear, fear for the son she hasn’t seen since the day he was born; and the only people she can count on are a reporter aiming for a Pulitzer and her sergeant. Small comfort in the face of the coming disaster, but she’ll take it.

Roland is coming for her, coming for John; and Patti Black Will! Not! Let! Him! Get! John! even if she dies keeping the Devil at bay… Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Palmer has returned to his old haunts in Chicago after an ignominious departure from the Army that had been his home for seven years; he’s returned broken and haunted by nightmares about those he’d left behind. Like most 27-year-olds, Palmer’s first impulse is to try to drown the nightmares with plenty of alcohol and meaningless sex, but so far, it hasn’t worked. When the murder of Michael Palmer, his only brother, leaves an orphaned eight-year-old in Jason’s care; it gives him the first trace of something to live for. But first, he has to just make it out alive.

Something nasty is going down on Chicago’s South Side in the neighborhood where Jason and Michael grew up; something whose tentacles reached out and pulled Michael under. Whatever is happening involves money, corruption, and murder – lots of murder; and Jason’s only chance is to expose it all to the right people. If he can find the right people, what with a crew or two of gangbangers and at least one nasty mercenary on his tail. With only a single CPD cop (foxy Latina Elena Cruz) and a couple of reformed gang members on his side; Jason’s chances look pretty slim. But the bad guys aren’t counting on Palmer’s ability to think fast in a crisis. You learn skills like that in Iraq… Read the rest of this entry »