Little Altar Boy
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
On a snowy Thursday night in Chicago, there is a knock on Detective Hank Purcell’s door. Sister Mary Philomena has seen something terrible at Saint Fidelis Church — a violation of all she holds sacred. The next Monday, she is found murdered in the convent basement, next to a furnace stuffed with old papers and photographs. And Margaret, Hank’s teenage daughter, has disappeared. Hank and his unconventional partner Marvin Bondarowicz try to force their way through a wall of ecclesiastical silence to find the killer, while their search for Margaret takes them from swank lakeside flats to drug dens to south-side basement blues clubs…and the snow keeps falling.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1967, Guzlowski's downbeat sequel to 2018's Suitcase Charlie finds hard-bitten, morally upright Chicago police detective Hank Purcell looking into some grim crimes. At the urging of Sister Mary Philomena, Hank and his quirky, iconoclastic partner, Marvin Bondarowicz, both WWII vets with memories of terrible things that men can do, confront a pedophile priest at her church, but the man denies the allegations. Days later, Sister Mary is found dead in the church basement, stabbed three dozen times. The church stonewalls the investigation. Meanwhile, Hank's 19-year-old daughter, Margaret, goes missing. His inquiries make it clear she's fallen in with a bad, druggy crowd. When an 11-year-old altar boy is discovered hanged in a closet, the bleakness of the world really hits Hank and Marvin, who resort to their fists and the bottle while failing to get much traction with either of the murder cases. The resolution of the crimes including Margaret's disappearance brings little satisfaction to either the dogged detectives or the reader. This is strictly for those who prefer the darkest of hard-boiled fiction.
Customer Reviews
Boys will be boys
Author
American. Born in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II, he came to America with his family as a Displaced Person in 1951, his Polish parents having been slave labourers for the Nazis. He grew up in a tough neighbourhood in Chicago and went to Catholic schools. His writing career of more than 40 years includes poetry, prose, literary criticism, reviews, fiction and nonfiction. The holocaust features prominently (surprise, surprise). Suitcase Charlie (2018), his first venture into noir, featured hard boiled Catholic war veteran and Chicago detective Hank Purcell and his (lapsed) Jewish partner Marvin Bondarowicz.
Precis
Christmas season 1967 in Chicago. The nun who helped our boy out in the previous book comes calling one evening in the middle of a snowstorm. She's seen one one of the priests diddling an altar boy and askss the H man to warn him off. These were different times. At least one of Hank and Marv's - I'll call them H&M from now on - warnings ended up in a grave deep in the Wisconsin woods. Be that as it may, a warning is delivered. The priest is outraged. Next thing you know, the nun, who is also the principal of the parish school, gets dead in the boiler room, stabbed a shedload of times. Meanwhile, Hank's previously well behaved 19-year-old daughter falls in with a "bad crowd" at college and disappears. Then the kid the nun reckoned was being diddled hangs himself in his closet at home. Parental advisory: a golden retriever dies a horrible death. Cue considerable fisticuffs, booze and suspension involving out heroes. Resolution is achieved, or as much resolution as it's possible to get.
Writing
Mr G knows how to write and shows it. The evocation of place and time is excellent. The interior monologues from the troubled hero are not unduly long. The strings are drawn together satisfactorily.
Bottom line
If you're into noir, there's plenty here to go around. There's a mea culpa aspect too. In the "confessional" end notes, the author explains he went to a school just like the one he describes, but had no knowledge of the abuse suffered by some of his contemporaries until many years later.