Second City

The Chicago Way by Michael Harvey

I bought The Chicago Way by Michael Harvey several months ago because Amazon had it on sale for cheap. I’m glad I did.

Most fictional detectives have sad lives and hard upbringings. It seems this is a prerequisite for becoming a good fictional detective. Harvey’s private investigator protagonist, Michael Kelly, is has a life filled with next level sadness. As I said to my wife, the best way to describe how rough Kelly’s life has been is that he’s a White detective in Chicago whose life-long best friend is a Black woman. Yeah, it’s that bad.

Kelly is a 35-year old private investigator who was formerly a detective with the Chicago Police Department. The case at the heart of The Chicago Way is a nine-year old rape of a woman named Elaine Remington. Kelly is approached by his former partner for help solving the case. Fighting for Elaine costs Kelly pretty much everything that matters to him, yet he never backs down. Even though he must meed the Chicago Mob and fight enemies in the District Attorney’s office, Kelly uses every single resource at his disposal—legal or not—to find answers. Throughout this novel, the reader gets to see all the reasons why Michael Kelly is a great detective and a pretty bad everything else.

Following the lead of its main character, The Chicago Way is one of the sadder detective novels I’ve ever read. Without giving anything away, I can say that everything in Kelly’s life takes a pretty sharp downturn in this novel. If he possessed the ability to step outside of himself, I’m not sure he would even want to solve the case that is at the center of The Chicago Way. One could argue that Kelly’s persistence in closing a case is nothing more than masochism. Even in the end, in the novel’s final scene, Kelly undertakes his most masochistic quest.

The Chicago Way is gritty. It’s hard and edgy and dark. And it deals with rape and murder and pedophilia. This is not some cute Hollywood detective story. It’s grim, and not very hopeful. And it’s all Chicago.

As with any mystery, there are twists and turns. I didn’t figure them all out before they came, and that’s a good thing. In most cases, I only saw them a matter of moments before the detective did. In some cases, I was wrong. I like that. The Chicago Way was a fully satisfying read.

I know that Michael Harvey has written two Michael Kelly novels that follow The Chicago Way. I will begin reading the next one right away. This was a great debut detective story.

B+