Karen’s Blog

The Fifth Floor by Michael Harvey

You take one look at this cover, and you know what you are getting: a detective/murder mystery story set in Chicago. That doesn’t make in any less enjoyable, though.


You have your classic cynical, hard-bitten-but-with-a-heart detective, Michael Kelly. The setting is Chicago, notorious for corrupt politics, and The Fifth Floor is named for that level of City Hall where all the “business,” good, bad and otherwise, goes down. Michael is, of course, a single guy. This story revolves around an ex-girlfriend of his, Janet, who is caught up in an abusive marriage to one of the thugs - I mean city employees - who wokrs for the city on paper, but does his own thuggery with deep mob connections.


Complicating the situation is Taylor, Janet’s daughter from a prior relationship. She’s a teenager, lies about her age, and is as scared, smart, tough and cynical as they come. Tired of watching her mother’s abuse, she approaches Michael on her own, and asks him to kill her step-father. That would make her and her mother’s lives so much easier ….


And so is launched a good, convoluted story, involving, at its core, the Great Chicago Fire, the controversy over who or what started it, real estate speculation, the current and future mayors of Chicago, and believe it or not, The Emancipation Proclamation.


Nothing is simple in this tale, which starts with one dead body, adds another, and sheds light on events long-ago past, and better - some thinks - forgotten. It was a quick read, and has a satisfying ending, which leaves our detective still single, but with a nagging question in his heart.


I recommend it to any detective story fans.

The Boys Missing by James A. Jack  

This book, with the grainy, greyscale photos of three boys from the 1950s on the cover, is subtitled “The Tragedy That Exposed The Pedophilia Underworld” and was written by one of the detectives who worked the case more than 50 years ago. I met Mr. Jack at the BEA, so this is a book I have signed. From far away, I looked at him, and my brain registered “policeman, retired” before I even remembered quite what row I was in. (Author signings at the BEA have the authors perched on stools at tables, and the attendees have to go down a long roped-off row to approach.

The book is very interesting, and very straight-forward. The three boys - two brothers and a friend - went missing one day, and were found brutally murdered and dumped in a park days later. Mr. Jack was one of the police detectives on the case from the very start, when one of the boys’ fathers came in to report them missing. While emotions of course run strong in the families and in the officers handling the case, the book keeps a calm, even tone throughout. There is no sensationalism, just the dogged hard and often tedious work of policemen trying to find answers in a case that has everyone in the city baffled. The boys, John and Anton Schuessler, and Robert Peterson, were 13, 11 and 13 years old when they were abducted and murdered.

While the case may have exposed the pedophilia underground to the policemen of this city, it doesn’t seem like it ever caused the sensation it would in today’s media. But the climate was much, much different then. In looking for the killer or killers of the three boys, Officer Jack and his partner encounter people whose lies and lives surprised and disgusted them, all the while still keeping their heads and searching for the answers in the case.

This book was just published in 2006, as the case, despite hours and months and years of work by the Chicago police department, did not come to trial until 1995, when new evidence came to light linking a certain man to the crime. Murder cases, Jack explains, are never considered closed, there is no statue of limitations on murder. And obviously he, and many other members of the police force and community had never forgotten the case either. That, after all the work they had done, and all the sexual deviants, criminals, and other unsavory types they dealt with they had still not found a clear answer bothered everyone. When evidence pointing to someone came to light, everything became fresh again, and the case went to trial, 50 years after the crime.

This is just a fascinating book, completely matter-of-fact and evenly told, and is sort of a study of the attitudes and knowledge differences - as well as criminal prosecution and forensic technology differences, between 1955 and 1995. I recommend it if you are interested in real detective stories, as long as you don’t expect a lurid tale that’s solved in 60 minutes, like years of TV programs have conditioned us to expect. This case, and this book, are a study in patience, persistence and justice.