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saareman 's review for:
Chicago: A Novel of Prohibition
by David Mamet
Weirdly anachronistic dialogue combined with deceptive marketing
Mamet can usually be counted on for memorable tough-guy dialogue laced with a liberal use of profanity and the breaking of all rules of grammar ("There is nothing that I will not do" - Spartan; "Put. That coffee. Down. Coffee's for closers only." - Glengarry Glen Ross; "Don't you want to hear my last words?" "I just did." - Heist; etc.). The dialogue in this latest novel (not his usual genre, so one wonders whether an abandoned screenplay or theatre work was recycled) uses an odd out-of-period Elizabethan or Victorian English in the mouths of the supposed 1920's Prohibition era Chicago characters. At one point after a character jumps into a grave (à la [b:Hamlet|1420|Hamlet|William Shakespeare|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1351051208s/1420.jpg|1885548]) I though the plot might continue with Shakespearean allusions but that didn't come to pass.
Although the Thompson machine gun depicted on the cover does make a late cameo appearance in the plot, the story has actually very little to do with the gangsters and the Chicago bootlegging wars between the O'Banion and Capone gangs that one would expect in a book promoted as "A Novel of Prohibition." Instead we mostly have two newspapermen fumbling their way through an investigation of a series of homicides that turn out to have nothing to do with the illegal alcohol trade.
#ThereIsAlwaysOne
I listened to the Audible audiobook and was startled to hear about a character's "late demise by lead" with "lead" pronounced to rhyme with "heed" instead of "led."
Mamet can usually be counted on for memorable tough-guy dialogue laced with a liberal use of profanity and the breaking of all rules of grammar ("There is nothing that I will not do" - Spartan; "Put. That coffee. Down. Coffee's for closers only." - Glengarry Glen Ross; "Don't you want to hear my last words?" "I just did." - Heist; etc.). The dialogue in this latest novel (not his usual genre, so one wonders whether an abandoned screenplay or theatre work was recycled) uses an odd out-of-period Elizabethan or Victorian English in the mouths of the supposed 1920's Prohibition era Chicago characters. At one point after a character jumps into a grave (à la [b:Hamlet|1420|Hamlet|William Shakespeare|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1351051208s/1420.jpg|1885548]) I though the plot might continue with Shakespearean allusions but that didn't come to pass.
Although the Thompson machine gun depicted on the cover does make a late cameo appearance in the plot, the story has actually very little to do with the gangsters and the Chicago bootlegging wars between the O'Banion and Capone gangs that one would expect in a book promoted as "A Novel of Prohibition." Instead we mostly have two newspapermen fumbling their way through an investigation of a series of homicides that turn out to have nothing to do with the illegal alcohol trade.
#ThereIsAlwaysOne
I listened to the Audible audiobook and was startled to hear about a character's "late demise by lead" with "lead" pronounced to rhyme with "heed" instead of "led."