Promises to the Dead (Hanley & Rivka Mysteries)
Chicago detective Frank Hanley is investigating the death of railway clerk Lawrence O’Shea, who disappeared shortly after receiving a letter from his son Michael, a member of the Freedman’s Bureau in post-Civil War Louisiana. Michael had been gathering evidence about plantation owners waylaying recently freed slaves and forcing them to work in sugar cane fields.
Promises to the Dead is rich in historical Chicago detail as it takes Hanley to rail yards, along city streets, and into ethnic neighborhoods populated by immigrants, mixed-race couples, free-born versus recently emancipated slaves. It forms a backdrop for little-known, at least to this reader, locales from 1870s Chicago, such as Hairtrigger Block near Wells Street, and the work of the Bureau for Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands that sought to help former slaves and poor whites after the war.
The novel is third in the Hanley and Rivka mystery series, continuing the barely spoken, budding romance between Hanley and Rivka Kelmansky and its opposition by her brother Aaron as well as a frayed friendship between Hanley and coroner Will Rushton. It strains, however, in keeping overall continuity. Connections between characters are too coincidental and convenient. Plot twists create bottlenecks, and action is unnecessarily contrived. Hanley identifies a suspect with little to go on, leading to repetitious surmises, investigative shortcuts, and foolhardy attempts to find proof. The Chicago of Promises to the Dead nonetheless is multi-layered and nuanced, and despite drawbacks, readers will be eager to follow Hanley and Rivka as their paths cross and diverge.
