Temple And Power

Description

Chicago is a corrupt city, ruled by clout, and wracked with racism, poverty, and drugs. Fenton Herzman is blind, a musician, and a master private detective in the lineage of Sam Spade, Philip Marlow, and Nero Wolfe. Reggie Haskell is Herzman’s eyes and hands on the streets, like Wolfe’s Archie Goodwin. Reggie, unlike Archie, is not the detective he thinks he is, injured  physically and ethically compromised. His sidekick, Fellman, is bigger, more agile, and likely more intelligent.

When Herzman is sent to the hospital, Reggie and Fellman are left on their own to struggle with drug trafficking and murder at the New Peace Temple in a western suburb, crimes which lead to an abandoned coal power plant by the toxic Chicago River.

Unlike the classic detective stories of Hammett, Chandler, and Stout, the heroes of Temple and Power, Fenton Herzman, Reggie Haskell, and Fellman Biggers, do not attempt to build islands of civility in a broken world. They live in Chicago and intend to stay there. They take the city for what it is. And they won’t give up, despite their own failings and faults.