Sauce for the Goose

Thursday night's political science class is pulling in an unlikely crowd: the teacher's a slick lawyer who wears $400 shoes, and the worst student is a mob henchman who nods off as soon as the lecture begins. Not that Jimmy Flannery is one to judge. What's this idealistic sewer inspector, Chicago ward chief, and new father doing at night school anyway?
He's getting an education in the finer points of the Chicago machine, where politics, patronage, and organized crime shake hands. Jimmy - a decent guy in a dishonest world - is familiar with his town's mangled grammar, its dirty contract deals, and the strange disappearances of those who become a liability. But night school is fast becoming a crash course in crime. First one classmate - the mob figure - dies in a suspicious mugging, and then the teacher, attorney Frank Vollmer, drops out of sight after promising Jimmy he'll take on a pro bono case.
Using his vast network of local connections both within and way outside the law, Jimmy weaves together a complicated picture that includes cheating spouses, suicide, and two disputed legacies. One involves a very well-off canine. The other, far more sinister, will determine who controls the city of Chicago.

Time has seemingly stood still in Chicago's Twenty-seventh ward, where the political machine still hums and where Jimmy Flannery (seen before in Cat's Meow) lives with his wife and baby daughter. In this latest tale, the city's parking meters are up for privatization, and the mob is moving in. Flannery's a sewer inspector by profession, but his real calling is as a committeeman for the Democratic Party: he's a footsoldier, an asker and granter of favors. In an attempt to tame his palookaville grammar and smooth his rough edges, Jimmy's attending night school-where his political science teacher just happens to be the big-time lawyer charged with deciding who gets the coveted meter contract. This big shot is bedding a mobster's young wife while his own better-half lies in a mysterious coma; his fancy car gets blood all over it and his thuggish bodyguard (also attending Jimmy's class) is soon horizontal at the undertakers. Meanwhile, a disgraced cop, having landed a job baby-sitting a dead lady's dog, is also trying to provide a home for human strays. Before "network" was a verb, guys like Jimmy practiced it: here, he digs deep into the favor bank to find what's what. Although Campbell regularly overdoes Jimmy's gruff goodness, he's added another warm tale to a consistently winning series.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Jimmy Flannery is as Chicago as the Cubs. He's a streetwise city sewer inspector, the Twenty-seventh Ward Democratic committeeman, and an amateur detective. He's also happily married and a new dad. Mary, his wife, suggests he improve himself by taking a couple of night classes: English for his grammar and political science because he lives and breathes it. His poli-sci teacher is a savvy power-broking lawyer named Vollmer, and one of the students is an aging Mob enforcer who sleeps through every class. When a classmate dies in a mugging, and Vollmer disappears, Jimmy--never slow on the uptake--smells a connected rat. He plumbs his street-corner cronies and his city-hall pals for answers. With a little knowledge, a little intuition, and a lot of Chicago common sense, Jimmy pieces together a scenario that involves greedy relatives and two trust funds, the mismanagement of which could put the political balance of the Windy City at stake. This ninth Flannery case is every bit as entertaining as the first eight, and that's considerable praise. Flannery is always fun, and so is Chicago. The combination is unbeatable. Wes Lukowsky