Chercover's Sophomore Novel "Trigger City" Gets Rave Review

Chicago private investigator Ray Dudgeon is having a bad night. Rolling over onto his right side, where a beating by two crooked cops had dislocated his shoulder, he triggered a nightmare and woke up with the taste of his own blood in his mouth. "The taste of blood, sudden sweats and flashback images sometimes happened when I was wide awake," he says. "... The episodes had diminished during the months I'd spent with my grandfather down in Georgia but when I came back to Chicago they were right here waiting for me. Chicago was full of triggers. Chicago was Trigger City."

This has been an unusually rich year for crime fiction. But Sean Chercover's second Dudgeon book, after 2007's terrific "Big City, Bad Blood," manages to rise to a unique height. He seems on his way to becoming the Ross Macdonald of his time, close to rubbing shoulders with Dashiell Hammett in the Crime Writers' Hall of Fame.

Business has been bad for Dudgeon since the aftermath of his mauling, and he and his part-time trainee, Vince, now mostly try to pay the rent and buy the occasional beef sandwich at Al's #1 Italian on Taylor by doing divorce work—snooping on errant lovers and spouses for a few dirty dollars. He's even trying to find a buyer for his beloved 1968 Shelby: "It easily constituted over 80 percent of my net worth. I could barely afford the insurance on it."

So when Isaac Richmond, a retired U.S. Army Intelligence officer, hands Ray a check for $50,000 for two months' exclusive work, looking into the murder of his daughter, Dudgeon is sorely tempted. "All I had to do is take a case that had zero chance of success," he says as he tries to convince Richmond that it's hopeless.