Suitcase Charlie: A Noir Crime Thriller (Hank & Marvin – Chicago Detectives Book 1)
“A tough-as-rusty-nails police procedural… Each environment seems spookier than the last in a narrative driven by lyrical anxiety.” Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal
Chicago, May 30, 1956: On a quiet corner in a working-class immigrant neighborhood, a heavy suitcase is discovered on the sidewalk late at night. Inside is the body of a young boy, naked and hacked into pieces.
Two hard-drinking Chicago detectives are assigned to the case: Hank Purcell, who still has flashbacks ten years after the Battle of the Bulge, and his partner Marvin Bondarowicz, a wise-cracking Jewish cop who loves trouble as much as he loves booze. Their investigation takes them through the dark streets of Chicago in search of an even darker secret — as more and more suitcases turn up.
“Every detective has a case that haunts him. For the Chicago cops Hank Purcell and Marvin Bondarowicz, that would be the “dead kid in the suitcase” whose broken body epitomizes “some kind of evil that was one-of-a-kind, fresh and original down to its buttons.” Guzlowski…lets us know that, back in the day, the city of Chicago was an all-around rough town.” Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times
“John Guzlowski beautifully conjures up the seamy side of the allegedly innocent 1950s with a thrilling serial murder mystery featuring two boozehound detectives… The plot moves sure-footedly to a powerful and plausible conclusion.” Philip K. Jason, Jewish Book Council
“James Ellroy fans will appreciate this grim portrayal of the hunt for a serial killer, poet Guzlowski’s first novel.” Publishers Weekly
When the first boy was found in the first suitcase, Hank had thought it was the work of a crazy person who had gone off and done one terrible, crazy thing, and he figured the killer’s madness would somehow suddenly dissolve and he’d never do such a thing again.
Hank was wrong.
That one terrible thing had happened again…
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John Guzlowski is an amazing poet, and as with his poetry this novel … Full disclosure: I was a colleague of John Guzlowski at Eastern Illinois University for two years in the mid-90’s.John Guzlowski is an amazing poet, and as with his poetry this novel wastes no words; evoking place and time, but also mood and mind-set and the tensions of life in a big city rocked by violence.As a resident of Chicago’s near North Side for over fifteen years, I can attest to the accuracy of the author’s detailed glimpses into the corners of the parks of…
Far more here than just finding out whodunit An excellent crime thriller — I read it in one sitting because I couldn’t put it down. The characters, settings, and social circumstances depicted in this novel all smack of veracity; I felt I could easily have been reading a nonfiction memoir written in the third person. While SUITCASE CHARLIE certainly delivers as a gripping detective novel, it also delivers a deeply disturbing glimpse into how racial and ethnic prejudices and propaganda can become dangerously institutionalized in society…