Pigeon Pie

Unflagging Chicago politician, sewer inspector, and sleuth Jimmy Flannery ascends a notch up the political ladder and finds himself with an alluring but scheming congressman's wife and a vicious killer on his tail

It is hard to imagine a more perfect rendering of people and place than Campbell delivers in the voice of his unlikely hero, Chicago sewer inspector and Democratic committeeman Jimmy Flannery. In this 11th outing (after The Lion's Share, 1996), Jimmy describes his elevation to alderman-in-waiting. He's honored but worried, and with good reason. Jimmy helped send Leo Lundatos, a long-serving congressman, to the federal pokey, but the still-powerful Lundatos is unaccountably ready to support him. More troubling, Jimmy (whose wife, Mary, is pregnant with their second child) feels stirrings for Leo's ambitious wife, Maggie, who has a power base and mysterious plans of her own. Meanwhile, a teacher friend asks Jimmy's help in fighting off a book-banning activist against whom the ward leader has faced off before. The politics turn poisonous when a bullet narrowly misses Jimmy and kills his campaign aide, a transsexual former cop named Mabel (nee Milton) Halstead. Jimmy struggles to identify the killer and run a campaign without jeopardizing political and personal alliances. It takes a coldhearted reader not to be charmed by this Irish pol. In this first-person narration, Jimmy mangles the language just right; it's no wonder his night-school English teacher loves him.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A new high note is sounded in the latest installment of the longstanding, outstanding, Edgar Awardwinning series; almost in spite of himself, Jimmy Flannery's political star just keeps on rising (The Lion's Share, 1996, etc.). Now, ``they''--the powerbrokers in Chicago's Democratic Party--want their illustrious sewer inspector to run for warlord (committeeman) of the 11th ward. Which is the Mayor's Ward. Which is clearly prestigious. Which is a long and hazardous step out of comfortable obscurity into a world full of public and punishing glare. It's a step fraught with implications. For one thing, it would require Jimmy to resign as committeeman of the hardscrabble 27th, where he knows how to operate for a needy constituency, and where he has never had to ``swallow anything I couldn't swallow.'' The proposition flatters him, but it also makes him undeniably nervous. And not just because of the politics. There's also the thorny alliance Jimmy will be forced into with former Congressman Leo the Lion Lundatos, currently doing 28 months for a series of malfeasances. There's the allure of the dazzlingly beautiful Maggie Lundatos, Leo's wife, who stirs Jimmy in a way that only Mary, his adored, has been able to do until now. Then, too, there's the threat posed by a pair of muscle-bound ex-cons who think broken bones whenever they think of Jimmy. And most unsettling of all, there are the complications resulting from the murder of his lovely friend Mabel Halstead--who used to be his loyal friend Milton Halstead. Was that a hate crime, someone's mindless vendetta against the transgenderized? Or were the bullets that took out Mabel really meant for Jimmy? The famous Campbell dialogue has never been more amiably quirky--or more polished--and as for Jimmy, the once and ever reluctant pol, long may he run. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In this eleventh installment in the popular series about Chicago pol Jimmy Flannery, the party leaders have let him know, in their own wonderfully arcane way, that he's being anointed as committeeman for the mayor's ward. Since that job will be a springboard to the city council, new friends and old enemies begin to spring up everywhere he turns. One of his new friends is rich, connected, and sexy Maggie Lundatos, the soon-to-be-ex wife of a crooked congressman who's doing time at Club Fed, but Jimmy is unnerved by what she might want in return for her support. In need of trusted advisors, he turns to a lesbian, a socialist, and a former cop who has gone from Milton to Mabel--hardly a traditional campaign team in a neighborhood like Hizzoner's Bridgeport. When Mabel is killed while saving Jimmy from a drive-by shooting and he finds himself battling book banners, Jimmy once again has to balance his principles against his political instincts. As always, fine entertainment from the reliable Campbell. Thomas Gaughan