Chicago

A big-shouldered, big-trouble thriller set in mobbed-up 1920s Chicagoa city where some people knew too much, and where everyone should have known betterby the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Untouchables and Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright of Glengarry Glen Ross. Mike Hodgeveteran of the Great War, big shot of the Chicago Tribune, medium fryprobably shouldnt have fallen in love with Annie Walsh. Then, again, maybe the man who killed Annie Walsh have known better than to trifle with Mike Hodge. In Chicago, David Mamet has created a bracing, kaleidoscopic page-turner that roars through the Windy Citys underground on its way to a thunderclap of a conclusion. Here is not only his first novel in more than two decades, but the book he has been building to for his whole career. Mixing some of his most brilliant fictional creations with actual figures of the era, suffused with trademark "Mamet Speak," richness of voice, pace, and brio, and exploringas no other writer canquestions of honor, deceit, revenge, and devotion, Chicago is that rarest of literary creations: a book that combines spectacular elegance of craft with a kinetic wallop as fierce as the February wind gusting off Lake Michigan.