Chicago Book Review: Michael Lesy's "Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties"

I'll admit that I was excited to kick off my month of reading nothing but books about Chicago with a good historical perspective on crime. Between the infamous turn of the century Everleigh brothel stories (inspiration for Sin in the Second City), dashing bank robbers (including John Dillinger, who died on the pavement in the Windy City) and mobbed up bootleggers (Al Capone, anyone?) there's more than a few stories to go around. The stories contained in Lesy's "Murder City" aren't cut of nearly the same mythical cloth. Lesy's book focuses solely on short vignettes used to illustrate just how Chicago police learned how to detect and prosecute murderers. They lack flash, for the most part, and are told in an anecdotal yet clinical way as if you were hearing the story of something really exciting happening retold by the world's most boring man. While it provides an interesting look into the development of the criminal justice system, it is neither rooted in enough fact to be truly intellectual nor is it told with enough flash to be interesting or insightful. In the end, the only thing Lesy killed in "Murder City" was any interest I'd have in ever re-reading the book.