Mon 18 Jun 2018
A PI Mystery Review by Barry Gardner: MICHAEL RALEIGH – The Maxwell Street Blues.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[9] Comments
MICHAEL RALEIGH – The Maxwell Street Blues. Paul Whelan #3. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1994. iUniverse, paperback, 2000.
Paul Whelan, a PI who specializes in finding people who don’t want to be found, has his usual not much of anything going when a black lawyer comes to him with a case. The lawyer has a client, he says, who wants a missing relative, an aging black man, found.
He can’t tell Whelan much about the man, but that’s all right — Whelan’s used to that. He takes the case but doesn’t find the man, because the police find him first. Murdered. The cops quickly arrest two young black men, but a friend of the dead man doesn’t think they did it, and talks Whelan into doing some discreet poking around.
It has better be discreet, because it’s an open murder case and the investigating detective is an old enemy of Whelan’s. Once more into the breach we go, down Chicago’s own particular brand of mean streets.
I don’t know why, but I seem to like Chicago books better than New York books, whether they’re cop, PI, or whatever. Raleigh does Uptown Chicago about as well as it can be done. The city is as much of a character as most of the people, too.
I like Paul Whelan a lot. He’s a man who has come to terms with his life and who he is and what he does, and all this without a lot of breast-beating and philosophical posturing. Raleigh tells his tale in the third person through Whelan’s eyes, with a lot of easy, realistic dialogue, and with smooth, clean prose.
It’s a low key story, about people rather than society or Big Issues, and I think it’s a good one, told by a very good writer.
The Paul Whelan series —
1. Death in Uptown (1991)
2. A Body in Belmont Harbor (1993)
3. The Maxwell Street Blues (1994)
4. Killer on Argyle Street (1995)
5. The Riverview Murders (1997)
June 18th, 2018 at 10:41 pm
In the next to last paragraph of Barry’s review I think he may be referring to Robert B. Parker’s Spenser books. As I remember, he wasn’t a big fan of the series.
June 19th, 2018 at 8:33 am
I have read all the Paul Whelan books for precisely the reasons expressed in the last two paragraphs of this review. Raleigh writes meat and potato mysteries that evoked a time and place most effectively with well drawn characters and excellent dialogue. I was never disappointed – or lectured to. Raleigh has also written PEERLESS DETECTIVE in 2015, a non-series book also set in Chicago, but I haven’t read it yet.
Barry also reviewed A BODY IN BELMONT HARBOR for this site: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=19844
June 19th, 2018 at 9:10 am
With praise such as from Barry and now from you, Bill, I have to wonder why neither Raleigh nor Paul Whelan are not better known. Even back in the 1990s when his books were coming out, I don’t think they ever got any attention from mystery readers. Other than Barry, of course, but his reviews appeared only in his DAPA-Em zine, which meant a maximum of some 50 or so readers.
I note that in that earlier review Barry compared Whelen favorably to Marlowe, unfavorably to Spenser. Thanks for reminding me of it!
June 19th, 2018 at 3:50 pm
In my earlier comment I almost referred to Raleigh as a throwback. I think the 1990s saw tastes/publishers shift to longer books with protagonists who dealt with side issues (angst, social causes, tangled relationships, etc.) that swelled the books and focused as much on the personal lives of the P.I.s as on the cases they were investigating. Not that earlier P.I.s did not deal with “issues”, but these issues seemed more concisely woven into the story and I think would not constitute a reason for buying these books. Today of course, this has ballooned to doorstop size books where the reader is asked to revel in all sorts of personal agony, Wallander being my archetype, a character who feels guilty if Styrofoam washes up on the beach (slight exaggeration only, I think). Many P.I.s seem to bite the dust at the turn of the century like Valin’s Harry Stoner (perhaps readers grew tired of him) while other writers like Michael Stone, Steve Brewer and many others seem to get off to a good start, then falter or disappear. Tastes change/evolve I understand, but the point at where the misery and/ or message subsumes the story is where I depart.
June 19th, 2018 at 5:00 pm
For those who like the kind of story that’s the current trend, I’m happy for them. I’m an old-fashioned reader like you, Bill, so if you had a camera on me right now, you’d find me nodding in total agreement. Well said!
And if I had any idea where I boxed up my copies of the first three of Raleigh’s books, I’d be reading one now.
June 19th, 2018 at 5:40 pm
There is a webpage for Raleigh:
http://www.midlandauthors.com/raleigh.html
He is a new author to me too.
June 19th, 2018 at 7:12 pm
Thanks for the link, Mike. That’s a nice informative webpage.
December 13th, 2018 at 1:59 pm
I caught up with Raleigh’s THE PEERLESS DETECTIVE: a coming of age novel structured around the mystery plot of a young man coming to Chicago to find his lost love. Billy Fox learns the detective business from a man whom he believes is rewarding him for an act of honesty.
The man seeks woman mystery is soon eclipsed by the mysteries lying behind the real relationships between the characters and Billy Fox’s own relationship with himself. Raleigh skillfully handles the coming of age theme by infusing it with equal parts action, humor and heart.
He never becomes maudlin or sentimental and Raleigh, as he does with the Paul Whelan series of books, makes Chicago a living, breathing organism, almost as much a character in the book as the human players.
The Paul Whelan books and this book will be enjoyed by anyone who likes a lot of heart in their detective protagonists, an element that emerges from the actions of the characters and not by the characters or author telling us that they care.
December 13th, 2018 at 6:36 pm
I’ll have to catch up with this one myself. Thanks, Bill!