Following Tommy (Cervena Barva Press, 2012) by Bob Hartley

Reviewed by Kevin Riordan

This slim first novel tracks a pair of young hoodlums, one brother more repellant than the other, who narrates, through the decidedly not post-racial landscape of Chicago’s West Side in the early sixties. If it was New York’s West Side you might expect them to break into a plea to ‘Officer Krupke’ but here they just clumsily burglarize the local lawman. These louts manage to hospitalize one another without it resembling ballet. With only the barest hint of secondary education, job history, or even descriptions provided, I was able to peg them from their wardrobe, creased baggy grey workpants and pointy shoes. This is the classic greaser style, from within a ward or two of the area that brought us the original Grease and that is not an ethnic slur; these punks are Irish, more likely to be boiled or pickled than deep fried. The block busting white flight manipulations of sixties Chicago are well chronicled in American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley – His Battle for Chicago and the Nation but here we see it through the ignorant short-sighted eyes of delinquents who imagine that terrorizing the new black neighbors will put them in solid with the local power structure of cops, aldermen and ‘churchgoers.’ The really sick thing is that they are right.

The writing has plenty of snap and is not overly witty, but then it wouldn’t be coming from a go to hell character like this, who gets flack for reading a book once in awhile, including tellingly, James T. Farrell, but can’t see the pointlessness of his actions until they become life-threatening. A surprising amount of neatly delivered suspense is present in this not terribly complicated story. Clichés are deftly dodged throughout, except for Junior, the brogue spouting father who seems dipped in it. (Jaysus that cup o tay was a bit thick.) So many Chicago writers approach their turf with deference bordering on awe, including Nelson Algren’s broken nosed lovely, that it is good to see someone portray the city like the vicious dog it resembles here. The device of the low browed narrator ultimately holds this story back from a fuller, more engaging story that is only hinted at, other points of view that want airing.

I could see Harley working this kind of thing up to rival William Kennedy’s Albany with a few more books; there is certainly no shortage of chicanery and skullduggery to tell of.