Overview

Michael Lesy\'s portrait of a gruesome era could be fiction -- but it\'s not. Things began as they usually did: Someone shot someone else. So begins a chapter of Michael Lesy\'s disturbingly satisfying account of Chicago in the 1920s, the epicenter of murder in America. A city where daily newspapers fell over each other to cover the latest mayhem. A city where professionals and amateurs alike snuffed one another out, and often for the most banal of reasons, such as wanting a Packard twin-six. Men killing men, men killing women, women killing men -- crimes of loot and love. Just as Lesy\'s first book, Wisconsin Death Trip, subverted the accepted notion of the Gay Nineties, so Murder City gives us the dark side of the Jazz Age. Lesy\'s sharp, fearless storytelling makes a compelling case that this collection of criminals may be the progenitors of our modern age.

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9780393060300

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Reviews

Many murders, a ravenous press, villains ordinary and extraordinary, cops intrepid, cops corrupt-all mingled in bland retellings of sensational cases from 1920s Chicago.Lesy (Literary Journalism/Hampshire Coll.) revisits 17 cases. He begins in 1920 with the case of Carl Wanderer, hanged for killing his wife and another man. From there, the author takes readers on a bleak journey featuring sad little people with big guns and no conscience. Harvey Church killed guys for a new Packard. Thomas Catherwood offed a woman for $50. A banker faced with financial ruin, thanks to an embezzling partner, blew out his brains in his car. Other sterling characters include a cross-dresser, a couple of hit men who apparently stepped from the pages of Hemingway's The Killers, a guy who decided to compete with Capone (not a good plan) and a Wisconsin farmer named Christ who dreamed of his daughter's death. The creepiest, most Byzantine case involves the disappearance and death of Northwestern student Leighton Mount. Was it murder? A hazing gone wrong? A massive cover-up by the university? Fans of the musical Chicago will enjoy reading the chapter about the actual cases it was based on, but all this sordidness has a sad, eye-glazing sameness that Lesy's narcotic narration deepens rather than relieves.Bodies drained of vital fluids, prose drained of affect. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Michael Lesy's books include Angel's World and Long Time Coming. In 2006 he was named one of the first United States Artists Fellowship recipients, and in 2013 was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. A professor of literary journalism at Hampshire College; he lives in Massachusetts.

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