NOBODY’S ANGEL
By Jack Clark
Hard Case Crime
218 pgs
Eddie Miles is a world weary Chicago taxi-cab driver. He’s divorced; his ex-wife packed her bag and moved away taking his daughter with her. He has no clue where she went. Whatever dreams Eddie had have long ago evaporated and his life is driving through the great Windy City in an endless circle all night long ferrying other lost souls.
When one of Eddie’s oldest friends, a veteran cabbie, is
shot and killed, he can’t help but take it personally. Though unaware of his
own lack of police skills, Eddie starts becoming super attuned to not only his
passengers, but the would-be fares throughout the next few nights. All the
while wondering if one of them could be the killer. Because of this heighten
awareness, he ends up saving the life a badly cut up teenage prostitute who
then calls him her angel.
Clark’s depiction of Chicago today is one of stark, merciless brutality and the world Eddie and his fellow hacks inhabit is reminiscent on Milton’s nine levels hell. This is a non-forgiving book about people who have given up struggling to hold on what little humanity is left to them. A remarkable achievement in noir fiction.
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