THE FIFTH FLOOR. By Michael Harvey. Knopf. 273 pages. $23.95.
Michael Harvey draws upon his three-tiered experience as a Chicago bar co-owner, CBS investigative reporter and co-creator and executive producer of the hit television series Cold Case Files to crank out this sequel to his highly acclaimed debut novel, The Chicago Way.
In this installment, private investigator Michael Kelly is approached by an old friend and one-time love interest, Janet Woods, whose battered face bespeaks abuse at the hands of her husband. The history of domestic violence is soon verified by a cop friend, and Kelly ups the stakes by tailing the abuser in order to confront him with the error of his ways. Kelly's investigation leads him to the corpse of a man who, before his untimely death, apparently had dealings with the errant husband.
But the abuse suspect is a "fixer" for the corrupt Chicago mayor who had a hand in Kelly's disgraced and undeserved removal from the police force. The fixer's position makes rectifying the situation with Janet problematic, and it makes investigating the circumstances of the murder a touchy and dangerous prospect.
The mystery in this novel stems from the possibility that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was an act of arson committed for the purpose of facilitating an illegal land grab by the mayor's great-great-grandfather. This plot thread and the circumstances that evolve from it include many fascinating historical tidbits as well as a surprise concerning a missing document written by Abraham Lincoln.
Realism rules -- for the most part. As a former kick-boxer, I can attest to the accuracy of Harvey's description of a fistfight with the wife-beater:
Fighting is hard work, even when you aren't getting hit. Sixty seconds in, he was pawing more than punching. Thirty seconds after that, he was done. Woods hadn't really hurt me. Maybe a tweaked rib or two, but nothing more than a light spar. Johnny, on the other hand, was spent. … Fighting's like anything else. You go up against a man at his profession and you're probably going to lose. You may get lucky. More likely you get your head busted in.
The flaw in Harvey's realism is that another character is able to delete incriminating files from computers anywhere in the world, whether they're turned on or not and regardless of whether they are even connected to the Web. Modern readers possessing the sophistication of thought necessary to follow this otherwise perfectly written novel will immediately see this as ludicrous. If this technology actually existed, society, as we know it, would cease to exist. Sadly, the author loses credibility and standing with this scene and could have omitted it without damaging the story in any way.
That said, Harvey comes close to redeeming himself with an otherwise tightly plotted, well paced and intricately developed story, populated with realistic characters acting within the framework of believably interwoven circumstances and described in prose fit for a master. I predict this book will rank highly in the mid-list category.
■ Steven Beach is a writer who lives in Lawsonville.
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