Hi, Chicago

My landsman Howard Shrier's High Chicago opens with protagonist Jonah Geller landing in Chicago from Toronto and tumbling into the bearlike embrace of a newly large old friend.

Whether this is a metaphor for Canada's fear of being swallowed up by its neighbor, I don't know. But, like Shrier's earlier Buffalo Jump, High Chicago plunges across a border.

That first book begins with story strands on each side of the U.S.-Canada line, then brings them gradually together in a fine piece of suspense-building. And that's a neat paradigm for crime-writing in today's globalized economy.

More later.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010