Earlier this spring or summer (or whenever... who the hell can keep track of the passage of time right now?) I read John Guzlowski's novel, Little Altar Boy (read the review: here)
As it turns out, it was the sequel to his first novel in the series, Suitcase Charlie.
My guides through that world? Hank and Marvin, the same two hard-boiled police detectives I followed through Little Altar Boy. My other guide was Guzlowski himself, who knows not only his police procedures, but his history.
It's got a bit of everything: historical fiction, mystery, crime procedural, and even literary thoughtfulness.
The novel begins when a suitcase, left on a street corner, is discovered. Inside is the cut up body of a young boy. It's almost too much for Hank, but as much as he wants to wake up and believe the whole thing was a dream, he instead hears the news that more such suitcases are being found around the city.
As with the crime in Little Altar Boy, the case takes Hank and Marvin all over mid-50s Chicago.
Some of the pleasure in reading Suitcase Charlie comes just as much from the characters as it does the plot. Both Hank and Marvin saw action during the war. They are scarred by it... Hank quietly and Marvin loudly, especially with his obvious penchant for booze.
Not only are the bodies of the children cut up, but forensics shows that their blood was drained from their bodies through small triangles cut into the bottoms of their feet. It starts to look as though someone wants the city to believe that these are ritualistic Jewish killings of Christian children.
Hank doesn't buy it (actually nobody in the city seems to except some sensationalized rag newspapers), but Hank still wants to know why. The war and the camps he helped liberate showed him plenty of hate for Jewish people, and yet he doesn't fully understand from where the hate comes.
The first night of their investigation has the detectives interviewing Samuel Fisch, a Jewish man who lives in the neighborhood where the first suitcase was found. They want only to know if maybe he had seen anything.
They return to Fisch's place later in the book with more questions as most of their "leads" thus far have turned up nothing. Hank questions Fisch, especially regarding why someone would try to implicate a Jewish killer.
Fisch: "What do I think is going on? I'm a Jew. Here in America, it's pretty good for Jews. The Christians don't let us into their country clubs in the suburbs like Oak Park and Evanston, but they don't burn us in ovens either. That's good. What kind of reason would someone have for killing little boys and draining their blood? Maybe they want it to be here a little more like it is over there, in Germany, in France, in Europe. Maybe they want to paint blood on the hands of the Jews and get people afraid of us, angry at us. You read your history, Detective Purcell, and what do you learn? First there's suspicion toward the Jews, fear, then hatred, and then there's pogroms and ghettos, and then Auschwitz and the ovens."
It's one of the most compelling chapters in the book, sandwiched in between other compelling chapters of plot. Hank's conversation with Fisch alone makes Suitcase Charlie worth your purchase. Given the divisive political climate we are in with an emboldened white nationalist contingent and a broiling discontent with minorities, Fisch's thoughts and comments begin to sound a little less like history and a little more like prophecy.
You can buy Suitcase Charlie: here
It'd be a good way for you to get on the ground floor of Guzlowski's series. Not only do Hank and Marvin reappear in Little Altar Boy, but I'm told that Guzlowski has a third book in the series coming out... and he's working on a fourth!
Jeff Vande Zande is an English professor at Delta College in Michigan. His latest collection, The Neighborhood Division: Stories, is now out through Whistling Shade Press and available: here.
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