Their Jind of Town

The hit, on a low-level mobster, is performed under a Chicago expressway by two hired guns, one of whom wears a ponytail. Also killed is a witness, a teenaged black gang member whose girlfriend escapes notice. She goes into hiding. So does the ponytail. Hunting them both is the mob, the dead youth's gang, Chicago cop Joe Morrison, last encountered in State Street , and ambitious journalist Holly Stryker, who smells a good story and goes after the divorced Morrison. The mob cast includes Angelo Franconi, in love with a boss's daughter, trying to be ``made'' and secretly spying for the Feds. A side plot about a shady character's seeking a corpse for a scam adds to the body count. Whittingham so effectively details the mean streets and projects of the Windy City that the accumulated grit nearly obliterates the predictability of the action. While the cop, the reporter and the gangsters are believable, fully developed characters, the demons that drive Angelo to his tortured life of split allegiances aren't fully probed--an ironic lack in a book that seems to go on too long. (June)