From Publishers Weekly
The vividly realized setting of this impressive first mystery is Uptown, an ethnically diverse Chicago neighborhood peopled with winos, street preachers, students, derelicts in doorways, juvenile gangs, Iranians, Greeks, Koreans, Mexicans, Pakistanis and other citizens of the world. Nice-guy private eye Paul Whelan is an Uptown native who avoids violence when he can, uses fists when he must, and often defuses incendiary situations by establishing common ground with very unlikely types. Although Whelan's speciality is tracking missing persons, he isn't having any luck locating a young would-be construction worker who has disappeared from the YMCA. But there's progress in his other quest, cracking the murder of an old friend, an alcoholic ex-newspaperman found bashed to death in an alley. Eventually he makes a key deduction that breaks both cases. Raleigh dishes up a slew of characters here, and even those who appear only in passing are named, causing some confusion but also lending verisimilitude. Graphic descriptions and just enough action make this a promising debut.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
Murder and other, slower, forms of death and decay on Chicago's skid row, as marginal p.i. Paul Whelan prowls among the winos and street preachers looking for the man who killed his even more marginal friend Artie Shears, who'd been interviewing derelicts for a book he hoped would turn his life around. When Whelan lands another client- -small-town ingnue Jean Agee, searching for her wayward kid brother Jerry--it's clear that the cases are connected, but how? Does Jerry know the mysterious Sharkey (a street person with a bodyguard, no less) whom Artie was excited about talking to, or is he another victim, or the killer himself? Whelan's persistent intimations of mortality amid the mounting body count (eventually including both the bodyguard and Sharkey) hint that things won't go well for him, and they don't; but the novel's depressive charge is offset by rare qualities of perception and pity. Newcomer Raleigh seems to have gotten so deeply inside his hero and his seamy world that there may be nothing left for a sequel. But it would be great to be wrong about that. --
Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.