CHICAGO DETECTIVE JACK FALLON IN THE MYSTERY OF THE EGG OF CHAOS
by Bob Kelly
A Chicago detective must solve a murder and track down a missing artifact in Kelly’s mystery novel.
On his 30th birthday, Detective Jack Fallon is called to a town house to investigate a murder. He and his partner, Elaina Rodriguez, discover that the crime scene is a dinner party gone awry: The Chinese Trade Consulate of Chicago wanted to borrow the Egg of Chaos, a jade sculpture of the yin and yang symbol from the Han dynasty, and the party (attended by a curator, consulate workers, a professor, and “significant importers of Chinese products”) was a means to facilitate the loan. Instead, smoke bombs detonate, the ancient artifact goes missing, and the Chinese consulate general is found dead in the study. Jack and Elaina quickly build their investigative team with help from FBI agents Teresa Marek and Henry Chan. Teresa informs Jack about a recent uptick in activity from Asian and Latine gangs, and that the potential importation of heroin may be a key element in the case. A deep love of Chicago is evident in Kelly’s story, with the prose richly detailing the local neighborhoods as Jack traverses the city: “We passed through the impressive middle European architecture…which was now populated mainly by Mexican Americans who added their musical, artistic and culinary culture to this thriving place.” While this is wonderful scene-setting, too much focus is placed on superfluous moments, such as the meticulous attention paid to what the characters are eating. When it comes to narrative, Kelly relies more on telling rather than showing: “I told the first officer I saw to tape off the front of the townhouse…I asked him what he could tell me…I told him I appreciated that.” Many of the events that move the plot forward are related secondhand, as when readers learn of an undercover agent who was killed while on the case. While Kelly’s story aims to be a thrilling crime procedural, the novel remains a mostly lackluster (albeit detailed) production.
The setting is rich and the plot has good bones, but the prose lacks immediacy.