Mean Town Blues

At the start of Reaves's intricate stand-alone thriller, 27-year-old Tommy McLain suffers a stomach wound in the current Iraq war that ends his army career. Back in the U.S., he decides to seek a new life in Chicago, where he has an old high school friend, Brian Dawson. Through Brian, Tommy meets lovely Lisa DiPietro. When Lisa tells the men she's being stalked, Tommy offers to “talk” to the stalker, a decision that sets him on a collision course with two Chicago mob families, two police departments and the FBI. Tommy finds himself in increasingly tricky positions as he draws on his infantry training to protect others, including Lisa. Reaves (A Long Cold Fall and six other Chicago-based crime novels) has devised plenty of clever traps, escapes and a few surprises, but Tommy remains a less than compelling hero and unremarkable secondary characters fail to lift this effort to a higher level. (Nov.)