The Junkyard Dog

This is an absolutely terrific book that should have wide appeal to many mystery readers. Campbell has taken many classic Hardboiled detective themes and managed to wrap them in an entirely new package and, in doing so, he has created a detective novel entirely unlike anything else out there. Here he has the dogged investigator working on his own with all of the bureaucrats and the mobsters warning him off. He has a story about corruption and girls who come to the big city expecting to make a new life only to end up in the morgue because that ended up being the most convenient way to shut them up. This essence of this tale can be found in dozens of fifties paperbacks.

What makes the Jimmy Flannery stories unique are that Flannery is show more narrated in perfect cadence capturing his Irish Chicagoan persona. Flannery is a precinct captain in the old patronage system of Chicago where votes were bought by doing favors like greasing the wheels so a fireman who drove his car into the lake after having a few too many thirty days short of earning a full pension at thirty years can rest in peace knowing his widow is taken care of. Favor for favor, markers being offered, this is Flannery's world, a world starting to change with the old neighborhoods changing.
But what happens when a bomb goes off at a clinic and a young girl and an old woman dies in his precinct and everywhere Flannery turns someone is trying to squealch the investigation and Flannery may be like a junkyard dog once he gets his teeth into something, but at a certain point can he fight the entire power structure of Chicago.

But it's not just the Davey and Goliath one man against corruption and evil story that makes this book. It's all the neighborhoods and the bars and the hangouts and all the people in this neighborhoods from all these different backgrounds that Campbell brings to life. Campbell took a large risk having part of the plot revolve around the bombing of an abortion clinic, but he managed to humanize people involved on all sides of the issue. At bottom, this book is simply a top notch mystery and stands with the best of them for its well crafted plot and for a writing style that just pulls you right in. show less

The dialogue in this book is simply amazing! Campbell definitely has an ear. And though his plot is a bit thin, the story plays like a fun cinematic romp starring some Holllywood majors. Hardboiled and laugh-out-loud funny too.