THE DEVIL'S CARD

A fictionalized review of a celebrated 1889 Chicago case: the disappearance and murder of Dr. Patrick Cronin. The details are grimly dramatic—a naked corpse, wearing only a scapular, found in a Lakeview storm-drain; a bloody trunk that may have held the corpse; a blood- drenched cabin that may have been the scene of the crime; and the victim's crusade against the nationalistic Irish secret society Clan na Gael. But first-novelist Maher's fictional point-of-view—fledgling reporter Tom Martin, assigned to the case because of his Irish connections—keeps everything soft-focused, distanced, meditative. More successful, then, as a sensitive, though slow-moving, historical reconstruction of ethnic tensions among the Chicago Irish than as a puzzle or thriller.