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Max Allan Collins needs no introduction to aficionados of the mystery genre. His bonafides are well established, from scripting the Dick Tracy comic strip to writing the graphic novel ROAD TO PERDITION (recently adapted, with much fanfare, for theatrical release) to co-editing with Jeff Gelb the FLESH & BLOOD original mystery anthology series. His long-running labor of love, however, has been his Nathan Heller novels. The Heller novels have functioned as a vehicle for Collins to mix fact with fiction in order to explore some of the last century's most notorious crimes, utilizing celebrities of the era as a name-checking backdrop. The books have accordingly covered such crimes as the Lindbergh kidnapping (STOLEN AWAY) and, most recently, the Black Dahlia murder (ANGEL IN BLACK). While the series was originally set in Chicago, the last nine or so have had Heller straying from those environs. Now, with CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL, he returns to the Windy City, using the Estes Kefauver investigation into organized crime as a vehicle for a fast-paced tale of murder and deceit.
The Kefauver Commission's investigation was the nation's first inquiry into organized crime. Heller is no stranger to this world; though he never worked directly for any mobsters, he was employed by their attorneys. He consequently knows where more than a few bodies are buried. Many of the high-level, high-powered gangsters with whom he crossed paths don't trust him to keep his mouth shut. Heller, however, plans to stay quiet, pleading the Fifth Amendment if subpoenaed, but Bill Drury, Heller's private investigation partner is cooperating with the authorities. Spurred on in part by revenge and in part by his sense of duty, Drury becomes the target of an assassination. Heller is then motivated to take on the mob. Heller being Heller, however, he doesn't utilize the hearings or the courts, turning instead to his own version of swift, sure and brutal justice. Heller, along the way, rubs elbows with the famous and the soon-to-be famous, from Frank Sinatra on the (temporary) downside of his career, to a young, undiscovered Jayne Mansfield, to a shady, second-tier underworld character who goes by the name of Jack Ruby. Collins's historical research into the people and places that populate CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL is exacting, and older readers especially will find the trip down memory lane at once entertaining and winsomely nostalgic.
Collins plans to continue moving forward in time in his future Heller novels. Although it will undoubtedly be awhile, one cannot help but look ahead to Collins's take on such occurrences as the death of Marilyn Monroe and the John Kennedy assassination. In the interim, Collins will no doubt continue to build upon a series that is becoming a compendium of mid-20th Century crime using the genre of historical fiction as a vehicle.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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