Book: Big City, Bad Blood
Author: Sean Chercover
Year published: 2008
Rating: 9/10
Review: Big City, Bad Blood is a thriller by Sean Chercover. First published in 2008, it was his first book.
The protagonist of Big City, Bad Blood is Ray Dudgeon, a former reporter who quit his job at a Chicago newspaper when stories he wrote were not published because of the connections of the people he was investigating. At the start of Big City, Bad Blood, Dudgeon is asked to protect Bob Loniski, a locations manager for a movie studio who accidentally uncovered a criminal operation.It seems like a fairly simple job.
But things get out of hand. The criminal operation that was uncovered leads to the highest levels of organized crime (known as The Outfit) in Chicago. It also leads to corruption in politics and journalism.
The plot of Big City, Bad Blood keeps the pages turning, and Chercover writes in a nice, simple style well suited to this sort of book. There are asides about Dudgeon's love-life (threatened because of his job), his family (complicated) and his love of baseball (The Chicago Cubs) and music (many types, but mostly jazz). While many thriller/mystery writers can spin a good plot, what makes Big City, Bad Blood stand out is the quality of the writing and the characters. All the main characters are complex (as real people tend to be). For example, Dudgeon is philosophical about the good and bad points of his job, realizing that he sometimes has to work for bad people. Loniski is shallow, but trying to be less so. Even lesser characters (movie directors, mafiosi, prostitutes, reporters and more) are well sketched.
About the author: Sean Chercover is a former private detective in Chicago and New Orleans. He grew up in Georgia and Toronto and now lives in Chicago and Toronto. He has also been a video editor, TV writer and a lot of other jobs, as well. Big City, Bad Blood was his first book; he has since written Trigger City, and The Trinity Game. I look forward to reading both.
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