Doing things 'The Chicago Way'

It is a measure of the ambition of Michael Harvey's first novel, "The Chicago Way," that we start it thinking about Dashiell Hammett and end it pondering Aeschylus. Here's his opening paragraph: "I was on the second floor of a three-story walk-up on Chicago's North Side. Outside the Hawk blew hard off the lake and flattened itself against the bay windows. I didn't care. I had my feet up, a cup of Earl Grey, and was working on my own list of the ten greatest moments in Cubs history."

If you're a fan of private-eye novels in general or of "The Maltese Falcon" in particular, you know you're in good hands. The only jarring note is that cup of tea, but that's soon fixed when narrator Michael Kelly has a visit from a fellow ex-cop, John Gibbons, whereupon Kelly reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out "a bottle of Powers Irish. John took it straight. Just to be sociable, I gave Sir Earl a jolt."

Gibbons asks Kelly's help in finding the man who stabbed and raped a teenager named Elaine Remington nine years earlier. He suspects a high-level coverup of the crime. Late that night, Kelly receives a call informing him that Gibbons has been murdered. Both the call and the nature of the killing echo the death of Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, at the start of "The Maltese Falcon."

Later, Harvey has some neo-noir fun with this exchange:

"'You're cute,' she said.

"'You talk too much.'

"'You're still cute.' "

He quickly adds: "I had heard this conversation, between a blonde and a detective, somewhere before." Yes, we've heard it, too, when Philip Marlowe encounters Carmen Sternwood in the opening scene of Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep." But we don't begrudge Harvey his little jokes, because he's embarked on a story as dark as it is powerful.

Kelly honors his murdered friend by investigating the rape of Remington, a pistol-packing mama who boozes too much and may be selling herself part time. He learns that law-enforcement personnel who worked her case have been turning up dead. That's one mystery to be solved. Another, possibly related, concerns an ongoing series of rapes. Kelly becomes involved in that investigation because his best friend, Nicole Andrews, herself a teenage rape victim, is part of a police anti-rape squad.

DNA evidence suggests that a rapist and murderer named John William Grime was involved in the ongoing crimes. The problem is that Grime is on death row. Kelly suspects that he has a partner who is still out there raping at his command. Grime is based on the real-life Chicago rapist and murderer John Wayne Gacy, whom the author interviewed in his capacity as co-creator and executive producer of the TV series "Cold Case Files." One of the novel's highlights is Kelly's death-row interview with Grime, who is as crazy as he is evil and manipulative.

This novel carries us to many levels of society. We attend a $500-a-plate dinner at the Drake Hotel that is sponsored by the Rape Volunteer Association. Most of those in attendance are female lawyers, judges, doctors and society matrons; most have been raped, and they're working for greater public understanding of the crime and more sensitive treatment of its victims. Kelly is there with Diane Lindsay, the beautiful and brittle TV anchorwoman who has become his lover, although he fears she's mainly after a story. Harvey also introduces a colorful cross-section of Chicagoans, including an aging mob boss, a lovesick prosecutor, and various crazed and embittered cops, as well as a generous sampling of local bars, including the Hidden Shamrock, which the author owns in real life.

With its fast pace, sharp dialogue, vivid characters and horrific crimes, "The Chicago Way" is hugely readable, even though we remain baffled about what's happening. The plot stays several jumps ahead of us; only at the end, after some startling leaps, do we see how the pieces fit together.

Well and good, you say, but what about Aeschylus? Well, the author was a classics major in college, and he knows his Greek drama. He reminds us of "The Oresteia" trilogy, which introduces the Furies -- the sisters Tisiphone, Megaera and Alecto -- who hunt down wrongdoers and torture and kill them without mercy. His point, finally, is that the Furies can have modern counterparts. At the end, we meet one, unmasked and unrepentant: "The smile she turned out was a lonely thing, one that asked for no quarter and offered precious little in the way of regret." The meaning of Harvey's title, let me add, is that the Chicago way is always the toughest, most violent way available. He makes his case.