REVIEWED BY BARRY GARDNER:

   
RICHARD WHITTINGHAM – Their Kind of Town. Joe Morrison #2. Donald J. Fine, hardcover, 1994. Avon, paperback, 1996.

   Whittingham’s first book, in which Joe Morrison also played a part and which I missed, was State Street (1991). He’s also written non-fiction books about the NFL draft and the life of a street cop.

   What we have here is Chicago. Though there’s much more to be said about the real city, for our purposes Chicago means cops and gangs of both the street and organized crime variety, and violence. Very soon after the book opens, a semi-independent criminal is executed for showing poor judgment in who he robbed. One witness to the killing, a young black gang member, was also killed — but one wasn’t. The story deals with how both the police and the gang bosses attempt to deal with the potentially disastrous situation.

   Their Kind of Town was a pleasant surprise. Prose, plot, and people all well above average. The story is told from multiple viewpoints, and Morrison is really no more the focus than several others on both sides of the law.

   I thought the dialogue for the various and sharply differing characters was excellent, and that each of the major players came to life very nicely. Though there was a fair amount of bloodshed, this isn’t an action-packed book in its feel; the pace is steady rather than frenetic. It’s one of the best gritty city cop novels I’ve read in a long while, and I’ll definitely find and read the first in the series.

— Reprinted from Ah Sweet Mysteries #14, August 1994.

Bibliographic Note:   The two Joe Morrison books are the only two listed for Richard Whittingham in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV.