Friday, August 26, 2011

#37: Nobody's Angel by Jack Clark

A Chicago cab driver ends up in the middle of two horrible crimes, the maiming of a teen prostitute and the murder of a fellow cabbie; cruising the streets in the shadows of the city's worst housing projects, he almost subconsciously moves towards solving both in Jack Clark's superior contemporary noir Nobody's Angel.

This book came out as part of Hard Case Crime, a top-flight collection of lost noirs and modern authors writing in the same vein.  This novel has a very unusual history, as Clark is an actual Chicago cab driver who self-published the book originally and sold it out of the front seat of his cab. 

It is an astounding story when one finds out how good the writing is.  It is obvious that Clark knows the mean streets of the Windy City intimately, and the characters are well-rounded.

If Cornell Woolrich drove a cab, and Jim Thompson was a passenger in the back seat, they might put their heads together and come up with something like Nobody's Angel.  Recommended.

I checked this out from the Morrison-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana and read it quickly.

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