Book Review: 'The Fabulous Clipjoint' Features The Mean Streets Of The Near North Side

Chicago IL

30 March, 2022

1:37 PM

Description

By Patrick T. Reardon, Third Coast Review: Fredric Brown's murder mystery, The Fabulous Clipjoint, first published in 1947, and reissued last December by Penzler Publishers, was good enough to win an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. But you don't have to be a fan of detective fiction to enjoy it if you're a modern-day Chicagoan. Brown writes with a great deal of specificity about the Near North Side in 1940s Chicago, and it's a much different place from the Near North Side of today with its fancy tourist hotels, sushi restaurants, and fitness gyms. The hero of the novel is 18-year-old Ed Hunter who is an apprentice printer at Elmwood Press where his dad is a linotype operator. The family lives in a fourth-floor walk-up on Wells Street, and, as the book opens, Ed is dreaming of reaching through a glass window for a trombone. "It was the hockshop on North Clark Street, the west side of the street, half a block north of Grand Avenue." That's about where Brindille, the French restaurant, is nowadays. Ed can hear the sound of the elevated train—today called the Brown Line—a block away on Franklin Street as he starts to wake up just before his alarm clock goes off. He gets dressed, starts the coffee and goes to wake Pop, only to find him missing. His father had been out drinking the night before, and Ed is worried. His worst fears become reality when two plainclothes cops show up at the apartment door to say that Wallace Hunter was found murdered in an alley. Later, after some investigation, a detective named Bassett meets with Ed and Pop's brother Uncle Ambrose, a carnival worker, and Ed asks if the police know where Pop went before the killing. "On Clark Street, first. Stopped in at least two taverns there; could be more. Had only a couple beers in each. He was alone. Then we picked up the last place he was; we're fairly sure it was the last place. Out west on Chicago Avenue, other side of Orleans." That's about where Lang Ocean Spa Thai Bodywork is today. Ed asks where his father's body was found, and Bassett responds, "Alley between Orleans and Franklin, two and a half blocks south of Chicago Avenue." Between Huron and Erie. "Then he must have walked south on Orleans and cut through the alley toward Franklin," Ed says. "But—gosh, in that neighborhood, why'd he want to go through an alley?" On or around that block today are such upscale dining and drinking establishments as Clutch Bar Chicago and Union Sushi + Barbeque Bar and The Franklin Room. Quite a contrast to the seedy bars Pop frequented. Read more at Third Coast Review Third Coast Review is Chicago's locally curated website, specializing in Chicago-area arts and culture coverage. Read more at thirdcoastreview.com