Overview
Carl Zwick is an aging Chicago Cubs baseball player. Sometimes he feels like he's spent his life hitting into double plays, but he's finally gotten onto the right track. Then tragedy strikes him out.
Anita Mills is a pretty single black mother just trying to get by. A random act of brutality in one of Chicago's rougher neighborhoods permanently ends her struggle.
Richard Allen Smith walks the streets of ChiTown saying God has sent him. He has an unusual, rather nasty way of getting converts to see the light.
What do these people have in common?
Nothing, it would seem, except they are all part of Detective Abe Lieberman's very long day. Lieberman, a sad, baggy-eyed spaniel of a man with the patience of Job and the wisdom of Solomon is trying his best to make his beloved Chicago a better place.
But when Lieberman and his partner, Bill Hanrahan, encounter these three very different situations they find that there are ties that bind and ties that can cut a man's heart out. Abe Lieberman faces a Gordian knot that he must somehow untangle—and if he makes a mistake, someone very near to him could die.
Synopsis
Abe Lieberman and Bill Hanrahan (The Rabbi and The Priest) once again walk the mean streets of Chicago, trying to maintain their normal lives while keeping the bad guys at bay. Think "Hills Street Blues" meets "Law and Order."
The New York Times - Marilyn Stasio
Kaminsky, honored as this year's Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, plots well and plays fair, while Lieberman keeps chaos at bay, holding his neighborhood together through the sheer force of his goodness.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewAbe Lieberman, the veteran Chicago detective who resembles a "sad baggy-eyed spaniel," is back in another of Stuart M. Kaminsky's Windy City thrillers, this time trying to unravel a murder mystery involving an aging former baseball star, a religious madman, and a charismatic black politician with questionable motives.
Battling high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and insomnia, 60-something Detective Sergeant Lieberman has another "normal" day on the job: When a fatally wounded single black mother, shot down in the streets of the South Side Chicago neighborhood called Terror Town, whispers Lieberman's name just before she dies, he investigates the apparent robbery and finds an interesting connection between the dead woman and a highly respected black entrepreneur and potential mayoral candidate. But Lieberman's search is complicated by other ongoing cases -- one involving a former Cubs baseball star and his maniacal stalker, and the other revolving around a self-declared prophet bent on spreading his apocalyptic message by whatever means necessary…
Gritty, atmospheric, and addictively readable, Kaminsky's Lieberman mystery sequence (The Big Silence, The Last Dark Place, Not Quite Kosher, et al.) contains everything a top-notch detective saga should have: a sympathetic and complex protagonist, a fully realized cast of supporting characters, a richly historied and dynamic backdrop, and, of course, intricate and engaging plotlines. There's good reason why the Mystery Writers of America named the prolific Kaminsky a Grand Master, the genre's most prestigious honor. Like the other Abe Lieberman novels, Terror Town is, simply put, the crème de la crème of detective fiction. Paul Goat Allen
Marilyn Stasio
Kaminsky, honored as this year's Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, plots well and plays fair, while Lieberman keeps chaos at bay, holding his neighborhood together through the sheer force of his goodness.— The New York Times