Customer Reviews

City of Dark Hearts

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As a Chicago native, who knows the history pretty well, and a lover of English literature, this book was a serendipitous find for me at a Heathrow bookshop. I didn't read the preface before the story, so I was later amazed that an English couple fooled me into thinking they were a single Chicago author. As I read their "interview" in the end of the book, I could see that Helen is a serious historical researcher. Well she did her job well and so did William. Their teamwork is also a very unique aspect that perhaps helps make this book the success that it is.

This novel has a lot going for it. Historically interesting it really brings the Chicago of 1893 alive. From the stinking Bubbly Creek and industrial Union Stock Yard to the glitter of the World Fair. The characters are fictional apart from one or two big names of the time, but each character was so well described and had such personality that I could easily have believed they were all real.

The story itself plots the lives of two young girls; Emily Strauss a journalist on her first major job, and Anna Zemeckis. There's a good pace throughout as we're left with cliff hangers at the end of chapters urging you to keep the bedside light on for a little while longer. It was hard to believe that the events all occurred during eight days in October though - I felt like I'd been living with the characters for at least a couple of months!

So overall a good combination of mystery, history and horror (the idea of 'Dunning' certainly fulfilled my idea of horror!) with the unique backdrop of the successful city of Chicago.
The authors, William Horwood and Helen Rappaport explain at the back of the book what inspired the story and the characters which was really interesting and left me wanting to find out more about the time and the newspaper 'Stunt Girls'.

This is the first book featuring Emily Strauss and I'm looking forward to reading the next.