Mamet is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, but this is his first novel in more than 20 years. In 1920s Chicago, where mob rule prevails, World War I veteran Mike Hodge works at the Chicago Tribune and falls hard for Annie Walsh. Then she's murdered, and he's out to get those responsible. Al Capone shows up for real, and the language is classic Mamet. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

In his first novel in more than two decades, legendary playwright Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross) picks up where his Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Untouchables left off, with a panoramic portrait of the Chicago underworld during Prohibition. Mike Hodge, veteran of the Great War, is a 30-year-old newspaperman at the Tribune, working with his partner Parlow to find out who murdered mobbed-up restaurateur Jackie Weiss and courting the sweet Irish lass at the local floral shop, Annie Walsh. But when his beloved is killed in a post-coital ambush, Mike has more reason than professional curiosity to uncover the truth. The story is fast-paced and violent but often difficult to latch onto because of Mamet's infamously dense and jagged dialog, which is on ample display throughout. Like the late novelist George V. Higgins, Mamet prefers to let his characters tell the story with a minimum of omniscient narration, trusting the reader to work out the plot through the lies and banter. VERDICT A hard-edged, though elusive return to form from the Pulitzer Prize winner. [See Prepub Alert, 8/14/17.]—Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ