cbr17bingo Review
The Third Rail is the last of a trilogy of gritty Chicago mysteries featuring ex-cop and current PI Michael Kelly. The first, The Chicago Way, focused on the police department. The second, The Fifth Floor, expanded to the mayor’s office, and this last installment reached the last of the triumvirate that governs Chicago politics.
But let’s start with the plot. Random women, riding the public transportation system, are being assassinated. Many of the large U.S. cities were, in the 1990s, often a dangerous place in which to live. (That’s why they are so much better now, no matter who might wish you to believe otherwise.) But that’s just to get your attention, and to distract. Something much bigger is in the works than a random serial killer. But let’s set the scene first. 1995 – the sarin attacks on the Tokyo subway. 13 dead, 5800 injured. Also in this time frame, sexual abuse cases within the Catholic church were beginning to break open in Chicago as elsewhere (such as shown in the movie Spotlight, occurring at the same time in Boston). And here, as elsewhere, sexual predators were being shuffled around rather than being reported. Let’s just say Chicago’s mayor has realized that a little leverage over these guys wouldn’t go amiss, and he is more than pleased for Kelly to pass some info down his way.
Kelly has a personal interest in this, on behalf of his girlfriend, and is invested in taking at least some of the perpetrators down. But sometimes the web is just too large, and you just gotta do as much as you can. All in all, a heady brew. Gonna miss this town.