{"id":1024,"date":"2013-05-31T17:34:03","date_gmt":"2013-05-31T23:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1024"},"modified":"2013-05-31T17:34:03","modified_gmt":"2013-05-31T23:34:03","slug":"michael-harvey-the-chicago-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/michael-harvey-the-chicago-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Harvey: The Chicago Way"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/form>\n

This is a stunning debut novel.\u00a0 Featuring Chicago P.I. Michael Kelly, Harvey manages to take the very tired old formula, initiated by Raymond Chandler, and somehow make it fresh and new.\u00a0 His P.I. is a tough Irish ex-cop, with an educated heart of gold.\u00a0 He reads Aeschylus in his spare time.\u00a0 The vengeful, bloodthirsty stories told by the ancient Greeks have plenty of relevance in Kelly\u2019s 21st<\/sup> century life.<\/p>\n

\"chicago-way\"<\/a>We\u2019re introduced to Kelly in the most classic of ways: his old partner walks into his office and asks for his help.\u00a0 Neither the P.I. or the cop code of honor allows not <\/i>helping out an old partner, and Kelly is all in.\u00a0 The story his old buddy, Gibbons, has to tell is horrible and gripping enough to get anyone\u2019s attention.\u00a0 Gibbons has always been haunted by the brutal rape of a young woman who was stabbed while it happened and left for dead.\u00a0 She\u2019s reached out to him and asked for his help in finding her rapist, who was never caught. Gibbons had been talked into forgetting the rape by his superiors, but a letter from the victim is a whole other story.\u00a0 He wants someone from outside the department to help.<\/p>\n

Kelly takes the file Gibbons gives him and begins to turn over rocks.\u00a0 Much like the ancient Greek stories that inspire him, Harvey\u2019s story is both simple and complex.\u00a0 The emotional strands are dark, strong, and twisted; the surface story is basic private eye.\u00a0 Gibbons, of course, turns up dead in chapter two and Kelly is initially accused of the crime, though of course he\u2019s been framed.\u00a0 Who has framed him and why is at the heart of the story though it takes the whole book to get you there.<\/p>\n

Harvey also has some things to say about rape.\u00a0 Maybe they\u2019ve been said before, but they\u2019re said very effectively here, and they give the book a very honed point of view that gives it a real edge.\u00a0 Sexual assault seems to turn up everywhere and no matter how it turns up, it\u2019s gut wrenchingly terrible.\u00a0 The thing is that Harvey manages to write about it in such a non-prurient and matter of fact way that what he\u2019s saying really sticks with you.\u00a0 The only other book I\u2019ve read about rape that was as effective and moving was by Harvey\u2019s fellow Chicagoan, Theresa Schwegel, whose brilliant Last Known Address<\/i> (2009) is a punishing look at the investigative side of rape.<\/p>\n

Being about rape also means this book is about violence and betrayal.\u00a0 The creepy way the original victim comes out of the woodwork makes your skin crawl even while you feel for her, and Harvey has a beautiful piece of writing where he considers the choices and decisions this woman might make and the different directions they might take her:\u00a0 \u201cLung cancer in a trailer park or a home in La Jolla.\u00a0 The choice was there.\u201d\u00a0 Somehow you feel in your gut that the trailer park is the eventual destination.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Kelly continues to turn over rocks, leading him to different discoveries of corruption both high and low.\u00a0 The connections he has with the various women in his life are complicated and multi-dimensional.\u00a0 The story is fast paced and brutal, and it doesn\u2019t let up until the very last page.\u00a0 It\u2019s energized by Harvey\u2019s clear, crisp, and memorable prose.\u00a0 Luckily there are three more books in the Michael Kelly series and a new stand alone novel to look forward to from this very gifted writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a stunning debut novel.\u00a0 Featuring Chicago P.I. Michael Kelly, Harvey manages to take the very tired old formula, initiated by Raymond Chandler, and somehow make it fresh and new.\u00a0 His P.I. is a tough Irish ex-cop, with an educated heart of gold.\u00a0 He reads Aeschylus in his spare time.\u00a0 The vengeful, bloodthirsty stories … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-p-i"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions\/1026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}