Customer Reviews

Dark Hearts of Chicago

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I bought this book because of William Horwood. Books like the Stonor Eagles, or the Skallagrigg, are utterly special experiences and I will look for him regularly to see whether he will lead me into new places, either of emotion or of adventure, with a new tale.

This is totally different from any work I have read from him, but excellent.

The setting is very real, Chicago in 1893 is well told, I can imagine it from the short and vivid descriptions. I hate too much telling of places and smells and flowers and shapes, but the way it is handled here is very well done, short and yet I could really feel where we were.

The short chapters are simply told, very stark, nearly just facts, and still, the tension mounts, the various strands flow together, the resolution develops step by step. Soon, I could not stop reading because the mystery that was being unveiled, the small and big cogs coming together was so gripping.

The persons were well drawn, I could get involved with them emotionally, although there is a bit of distance, somehow, as if I were also a journalist following a story. There is no comparison with the deeply emotional tales Horwood has written before, where faith and feelings and inner callings were so very important.

The partially horrific settings (madhouse, slums) are not overdone, I was frightened at moments that there might be too much horror, but it was always just enough for the story, no violence for violence's sake, and no obsession with the sick minds of some of the characters. Again, just enough to be vivid and to make the story very very clear, also in its darkness.

Finally, the telling from the women's point of view was a bonus. Not only did the women seem real for the time (no 21st century heroines put by chance in a long skirt), but to see the limitations and the courage and strength of them, and the first steps towards equality that were taken then, it was a true bonus. Never overwhelmed the story, but gave an extra dimension I enjoyed a lot.

I will read anything by these two authors again.

I recommend this book to anyone who likes a good mystery, who likes a well done realistic historical setting, and who still wants to be very well entertained.

I found Dark Hearts of Chicago at a used book store. When I read the overview on the back of the book (a cub reporter is trying to dig into why so many young women have been disappearing during the 1893 World's Fair), I thought, "This sounds a little like The Devil in the White City". However, I was intrigued by the first few pages, plus it was cheap, so I decided to go for it. Turns out it wasn't really like The Devil in the White City, in part because it wasn't written as well, but also because despite the description, Dark Hearts didn't really focus on the World's Fair. It was more focused on the general attitude and culture of the city at the turn of the century.

Dark Hearts of Chicago tries to get at how crazy Chicago was at the beginning of the 20th century. The city was growing, in large part because of the flow of immigrants, massive industries, like meat packing, were changing the way the city operated, and the gap between the poor and the wealthy was extreme. This book touches on all these topics, as well as the idea of women getting into the work force, the development of the pornography industry in the U.S., and the public and medical view of mental illness. An ambitious book to say the least.

After finishing the book, I realized that it doesn't quite do all of these topics justice. It's a long book - over 600 pages - so the authors had the space, but it just wasn't done that well. It's not a bad book, it's just not great. Part of my problem with the book is that is just didn't feel true to the time period - I could tell that the authors were bringing and 21st century perspective and voice to a 19th century story. Two examples of this were:

The dialogue - It just didn't ring true to the setting, which I found distracting. For example, the main female character, a reporter named Emily Strauss, addresses two men as "You guys". I just don't think women were saying that in the 1890s.

Emily's role in exposing the pornography trade. I had a hard time believing that a woman in 1893 would ever be shown pornographic images, even if it was in the name of her work as a reporter. The male characters she was working with really only made a half-hearted attempt at keeping her from seeing pretty graphic images and she quickly got involved in trying to expose the powerful men who were driving the development of the burgeoning pornography industry without any real resistance. I just wasn't buying it.

Maybe I'm generalizing the time period too much, but I found the authors difficulty in capturing the voice and culture of the time period made the whole book a little weak. That said, I finished it and found the story somewhat compelling. I've read a number of books (fiction and non-fiction) about Chicago and Dark Hearts brings up some aspects of the city that I hadn't read about before, but there are other Chicago books I enjoyed more.