KAPLAN'S PLOT

Having flamed out at a California startup, Elijah Mendes returns home broke to be with his cancer-stricken mother in Chicago, where he uncovers dark secrets about his Jewish family.

His mother, Eve, an acclaimed poet working on her memoir, has avoided learning about the criminal activities of her Russian-born father, Yitzhak “Yitz” Kaplan. But Elijah’s research reveals he was the murderous head of a Jewish Maxwell Street mob. In alternating chapters, the novel traces Yitz’s rise from errand boy for head mobster Avi Kaminsky to the equally ruthless killer who deposes him. Yitz’s more-reserved younger brother, Solomon, is happiest running his classy butcher shop, but his place in infamy was secured when as a boy he saved Yitz from an attacker by lethally shoving a wooden stick into the assailant’s neck. The women in the story, including Eve’s ill-fated mother, do not have a happy time of it. Elijah, whose late lawyer father “was a Hispanic Jew or Moroccan or something,” ultimately finds connections between his (Elijah’s) empty existence and that of his grandfather, whose corpse “continued the lonely existence that the man who once inhabited the body experienced every moment of his life.” First-time novelist Diamond does a solid job of tracing the rise and fall of the Jewish mob in Chicago, highlighting their dealings with the Irish (who didn’t learn “to respect the Jews”) and the Italians (enemies with “flair and style”). You can’t go wrong with characters named Izzy the Trout and Jerry Knish. It’s too bad Elijah is such a bland protagonist and that the novel contains so few surprises or revelations—though Elijah’s dis of Hyde Park may qualify as one for certain readers.

An ambitious novel with a better backstory than contemporary one.