Start Shooting

November 7, 2011
Edgar-finalist Newton follows his acclaimed debut, Calumet City (2008), with a gritty and complex novel of gangland alliances, police corruption, and a tragic murder that continues to haunt decades later. Police officers Bobby Vargas and his brother, Ruben, were brought up in the tough, gang-infested streets of Chicago’s Four Corners neighborhood. Back in 1982, a 13-year-old Irish American girl, Coleen Brennan, was found raped and murdered, her apparent assailants a couple of neighborhood thugs, one of whom was convicted and executed. Bobby and the slain girl, who lived next door at the time, had been involved in an innocent yet forbidden romance. Now, a local newspaper reporter has been writing a series of pieces implicating the Vargas brothers in the murder. Meanwhile, Arleen Brennan, Coleen’s twin sister, who’s returned to Chicago with some baggage of her own, dreams of finally becoming a successful actress, at any cost. A somewhat silly subplot involving WWII-era biological terrorism is Newton’s only misstep in an otherwise excellent effort.

Starred review from December 1, 2011
Thirty years after the rape-murder of his childhood girlfriend Coleen Brennan in his West Side Chicago neighborhood—a crime for which a retarded African-American man was executed—young Latino cop Bobby Vargas finds himself accused of the killing. Meanwhile, Coleen's twin sister Arleen, an actress, is targeted by criminal elements after fatally shooting a member of the Korean mafia on a police sting she was forced into by Bobby's older brother Ruben, also a cop. Bobby's and Arleen's chances of survival: not great. Doing for the Windy City what The Wire did for Baltimore and James Ellroy's novels did for Los Angeles, this book uncovers with sardonic intensity the deep and seemingly irreversible connections between crime, politics, business and tabloid journalism. Chicago is re-bidding for the 2016 Olympics (Rio, which won the bid in real life, has dropped out in the novel), meaning the City Hall will do anything to protect its image. With star crime reporter Tracy Moens on the prowl for juicy exposes for the fictional Chicago Herald, that's going to take some doing. Hardly a page is turned in this headlong melodrama without someone getting threatened, beat up, shot, killed or, in Bobby's case, framed for the abuse of a 7-year-old "peewee gangster." Even with matters of life and death playing out around him, Bobby, a blues-guitar aficionado since a childhood encounter with Howlin' Wolf, is desperate not to blow an opportunity to perform with the legendary Memphis Horns. Arleen is equally desperate not to ruin her odds-on chance of winning the role of Blanche DuBois in a major revival of "A Streetcar Named Desire" (opposite Judd Law!). In the midst of all the violence and madness, these career concerns seem unrealistic. But in fiction as audaciously dialed up as this, a little more fantasy can't hurt. Following up Calumet City (2008), Newton delivers an even more thrilling, densely packed novel that makes most Chicago crime thrillers seem tame.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from November 1, 2011
Bobby Vargas and Arleen Brennan are both survivors of Four Corners, a poor, violent neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. A cop with the Gang Crimes unit, Bobby is facing a war between Latin drug gangs. Arlene is an almost-39-year-old actress hoping for her big breakplaying Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. But their Four Corners youth, including the rape and murder of Arleen's twin sister at age 13, won't let either of them go. Newton employs the same approach he used so successfully in his debut, Calumet City (2007): a vast cast of characters, many deeply evil; numerous subplots (here including takes on Chicago's unsuccessful bid for the 2016 Olympics and a failing tabloid hoping to rise from the dead with a blockbuster expos'); copious violence and car chases; a granular look at the city; and a writing style that might be called fever dream. Newton ratchets up the multiple threats Bobby and Arleen face to levels that may exhaust some readers, and when the sprawling, convoluted plot finally unfolds, it is completely over the top. Still, Arleen and Bobby are wonderfully realized characters, and the beyond-frenetic action is certainly hypnotic. Newton has created the writerly equivalent of every great Chicago bluesman who ever lived playing together, all soloing simultaneously. It might be messy, but you wouldn't want to miss a single note.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)