Sam Reaves is a Chicago writer with a proven background. Ask any of his fellow Chi-town writers for a list of their top ten writers, and Reaves name is sure to come up. There’s been a gap between books and Reaves’ name has never quite broken out of regional circles. But that’s about to change thanks to the beginning of a new series featuring Mike Dooley, Chicago Homicide cop.

The year is 1969 and the place is Chicago. A body has been found. A woman savagely murdered and the body dumped. Nobody wants Dooley to pursue this case but being a cop is what Dooley does and he must speak for the dead. Dooley runs the leads through a summer and a time most readers are familiar with. I can sum up two dozen books written in this city and against this timeline. None have represented what Reaves manages in HOMICIDE 69. Dooley is not a man coming of age in the late sixties. His experience with everything from the Manson slayings, to the Chicago riots is far different than those we usually read. A good Catholic family man and an honest cop in a corrupt system, Dooley came of age in WWII. He lost something there; faced horrors that cannot be shared by anyone other than those who’ve gone through the same. And now this father of three is full of sorrow. His oldest son is in ‘Nam. Letters have tapered off but between the lines of the less frequent missives Mike sees that he can now share his loss of self with his son, Kevin. It isn’t something he wants but better a son with these horrific memories than a wooden casket being returned home. At the “office” Dooley and his partner identify the body of the slain woman and the location where she died through dogged police work. When it turns out she is the ex of an assassinated Mob guy, pieces begin to fall into place. The mobsters and some of Chicago’s finest both try to warn Dooley away. As he gets closer to answers, who the bad guys and good guys are becomes murkier and murkier. Richly drawn collages of the summer of ‘69 suck the reader in. The complexity of what Dooley the person is going through parallel to the complexity of a sordid Chicago crime make this a superb book on every level.

Ruth Jordan