David Mamet hasn't published a novel in 20 years, but he makes up for it in every way with Chicago. Set during the height of Prohibition, the novel follows intrepid reporter Mike Hodge, whose nose for news only serves to get him into trouble. While other reporters at the Chicago Tribune make an effort to stay under the radar of City Hall, mobster Al Capone and even their own publisher, Mike constantly looks for rocks to turn over and skeletons to expose.

A veteran fighter pilot of World War I, Mike prefers the stories "told at the bar" than those printed "in the rag" for which he works. Mike thinks outside the box, uncovering sources no one else considers. After attending a series of mob-related funerals, he approaches the florist to the mob for insider knowledge, and instead meets the Irish girl of his dreams, Annie Walsh.

Mike's knack for words ("Jackie Weiss," he writes, "had died of a broken heart, it being broken by several slugs from a .45.") garners him respect among the mob. But his dogged questions about a pair of shadowy men attending the funeral ultimately get the best of him, leading to Annie's murder and plunging Mike into a quest for justice and revenge.

Movie buffs will immediately recall Mamet's screenplay for The Untouchables about the legendary showdown between FBI Agent Eliot Ness and Capone. Whereas the movie was a tense, action-packed shoot'em-up, Chicago is a more methodical whodunit, though fraught with plenty of tense peril of its own. Better yet, Chicago is a master class in the author's trademark "Mamet speak," made famous by his Pulitzer Prize-winning screenplay Glengarry Glen Ross. Every page is layered with sharply drawn, often biting dialogue. Some of the conversations are so thick you may have to read them twice to catch everything, but they're so good you won't mind one bit.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Mamet is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, but this is his first novel in more than 20 years. In 1920s Chicago, where mob rule prevails, World War I veteran Mike Hodge works at the Chicago Tribune and falls hard for Annie Walsh. Then she's murdered, and he's out to get those responsible. Al Capone shows up for real, and the language is classic Mamet. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

In his first novel in more than two decades, legendary playwright Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross) picks up where his Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Untouchables left off, with a panoramic portrait of the Chicago underworld during Prohibition. Mike Hodge, veteran of the Great War, is a 30-year-old newspaperman at the Tribune, working with his partner Parlow to find out who murdered mobbed-up restaurateur Jackie Weiss and courting the sweet Irish lass at the local floral shop, Annie Walsh. But when his beloved is killed in a post-coital ambush, Mike has more reason than professional curiosity to uncover the truth. The story is fast-paced and violent but often difficult to latch onto because of Mamet's infamously dense and jagged dialog, which is on ample display throughout. Like the late novelist George V. Higgins, Mamet prefers to let his characters tell the story with a minimum of omniscient narration, trusting the reader to work out the plot through the lies and banter. VERDICT A hard-edged, though elusive return to form from the Pulitzer Prize winner. [See Prepub Alert, 8/14/17.]—Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ

Playwright Mamet returns to the scene of one of his greatest successes, the screenplay for Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, with his new novel, set in Chicago during Prohibition in the 1920s. Mike Hodge is a veteran pilot of the Great War and current reporter for the Tribune. In a very Mamet touch, the book begins with a literary conversation between Mike and fellow reporter Clement Parlow in a duck blind. But in no time, Mike is racing off to find the killer of his girlfriend, Annie Walsh. All he has to go on is a fuzzy photo of two unknown men at the funeral of nightclub owner Morris Teitelbaum, so Mike cuts a swath through gangland Chicago. All this is basically just an excuse for the author to exercise his patented talent with dialogue ("There's this to say for a broken heart, it keeps your weight down"). Unfortunately, this works better in his plays than here, where the highly charged conversations slow down the haphazardly plotted story. But Mike proves himself the spiritual kin of Chicago reporter Hildy Johnson from Hecht and MacArthur's The Front Page, and Mamet's Chicago setting is immersively evoked. (Feb.)