The Maxwell Street Blues: A Chicago Mystery Featuring Paul Whelan - Hardcover

Raleigh, Michael

4.06

34 ratings by Goodreads

9780312113940: The Maxwell Street Blues: A Chicago Mystery Featuring Paul Whelan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312113943 ISBN 13: 9780312113940

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1994

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Chicago private eye Paul Whelan is looking for some much-needed cash, when a cagey lawyer hires him to find a missing person. Sam Burwell was last seen running a booth at Maxwell Street's open-air flea market, a place where tires, tools, trinkets, and the odd treasure are sold alongside food of every ethnic description.
Whelan's search leads nowhere until Burwell is found murdered, and the Chicago police take over the case. But Burwell's childhood friend, an elderly black man named O. C. Brown, asks Whelan to look into the murder. Returning to his favorite haunts - Chicago's streets, with a story on every corner and a new restaurant on every block - Whelan slowly enters an underworld of predators and scavengers, where a killer can hide in plain sight.
Played out against a soundtrack of blues and jazz, rich with Chicago's sights, flavors, and smells, The Maxwell Street Blues is the third book in Michael Raleigh's acclaimed series featuring Paul Whelan.

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About the Author:

Michael Raleigh has taught at Truman College for the past thirteen years.

From Kirkus Reviews:

It's been years since anybody's seen Samuel Burwell around Chicago's scruffy West Side; but some anonymous client of well- tailored black lawyer David Hill thinks the old street vendor is back on his old turf again, and Hill hires PI Paul Whelan (The Body in Belmont Harbor, 1993, etc.) to find him. Whelan shows a 20-year- old photo around Maxwell Street and asks the same questions dozens of times, but he can't find Burwell, because Burwell's dead, shot and shoved under one of the West Side's legendary elevated sidewalks. And when Whelan, who can't take a case the police are actively investigating, agrees to dig up some information about Burwell's life for his old partner, O.C. Brown--``Lemme see if I got it right,'' his cop buddy Albert Bauman jeers: ``You're not investigating this guy's murder; you're investigating his life''- -other people he's been talking to about Burwell's 30-year-old secrets start dying too. Under Raleigh's searching lens, the ``back-alley Brigadoon'' of Maxwell Street teems with unwholesome life--each sandwich has its own distinctive smell--but this time the atmosphere swallows up the characters, who have about as much individuality as bacteria, and the plot as well. When you stand back from the story, all you see is a decent man banging his head repeatedly against a stone wall until it finally cracks. -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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