Article: "Mobster Chicago Used As The Colorful Back Story"

NOTE: I published the following article in Mystery Readers Journal, Summer 2013, about the Chicago setting I use in my crime noir Topaz Moon due out from Crossroad Press later this year.

When I wrote my new crime novel Topaz Moon, I needed to set my back story in a mobster city, and Chicago with its Al Capone and the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre heritage quickly came to mind. The biggest drawback, as I viewed it, was those old campy gangster clichés didn’t help to portray my gangsters with a fresh authenticity or vivid sharpness I wanted to get. So, I would have to use extra care in the construction of my Chicago characters to skirt their shopworn depictions. I’d visited Chicago a good while back, so I had at least a general idea of the cityscape.

To set the main narrative, a middle-aged criminal attorney, Hondo Gunn, is practicing in a small Virginia town called Emerald Shire where he falls for a younger lady, Aggie Essex, who works for an IT firm. Hondo in his younger days served as the consigliore (legal counsel) for an organized crime outfit headed by its ruthless chieftain, Drake Hardcastle. Also thrown into the mix is his equally ruthless while fetching daughter Maeve.

I suppose she could be considered the novel’s femme fatale although I believe the once popular film noir term is probably not used as much nowadays. At any rate, Maeve falls in love with Hondo, or at least her version of love. He quickly sees how vicious and dangerous she actually is, and he devises and executes a clever plan to escape Chicago’s trap.

They cut a grand deal whereby Hondo will be permitted to leave Chicago but then return if Maeve ever feels the need to make use of his legal talents. Years later, after Drake dies from suspicious circumstances, Maeve decides she must have Hondo back in Chicago to help her run the organized crime outfit she’s now inherited and is in charge of directing. The word goes out to Hondo practicing law in small town Emerald Shire, Virginia, that his services are required by his old boss’ daughter Maeve. Hondo is reluctant to live up to his side of their deal because he’s smitten with Aggie and wishes to remain close by her to continue their romance. When this news reaches Maeve, she grows disconcerted and takes more vigorous action to rein in her maverick lawyer who’d developed a mind of his own.

I use a great deal of back story to develop the relationship between Hondo and Maeve, all of it occurring in Chicago. Most of the scenes take place in the expensive restaurants and the Hardcastles’ well-guarded manor in Lincoln Park on the Chicago lakefront. I liked the sinister gangster association of the setting, but I had to be careful to show Hondo’s stubborn and independent streak. I didn’t want him to get lumped in with the other members of the organized crime outfit. He’s a country boy from Iowa who came to Chicago, the big city, to attend law school and then make his bones as a hotshot attorney.

He lets himself get taken in by the Hardcastles because he sees it as his ticket to becoming a somebody. Not until he’s well-entrenched in their business does he begin to experience serious regrets over his decision to cast his lot with them. He yearns to leave the hectic Chicagoan lifestyle and return to his simpler, slower days as a small town resident. It’s probably not fair to portray Chicago in this unflattering light (the “mobbed up” city) because I enjoyed my own time spent there even if it was in January, and does it get cold there. My mother-in-law is also from Chicago and its many outlying suburbs, so I have that connection, as well. I stayed at a writers residence in the suburb of Lake Forest located thirty-two miles from the downtown Chicago Loop.

Perhaps if I’d set the main narrative in Chicago, I would have enjoyed more room to show its more positive sides. But Topaz Moon is a crime noir using a compact plot and a snappy pace, constructed similar to the classic crime paperbacks from Gold Medal/Fawcett Books. I didn’t have a lot of words to use, so I kept my back story pared back, including my depiction of the city’s rich setting. However, Chicago does play an important function at the end of Topaz Moon, so it’s an integral part to my building of the narrative arc.

The End