Mr. Palmer’s Neighborhood

Michigan-born Chicago wordsmith Marcus Sakey’s first novel, The Blade Itself (2007), received some phenomenally good press, including a pick by Esquire magazine as one of the “Year’s 5 Best Reads.” But in his review of this author’s new sophomore novel, At the City’s Edge, January Magazine contributing editor David Thayer says that Sakey’s efforts “to re-create the magic of his debut work” have brought “mixed results.”

The story builds around Jason Palmer, a former soldier “recently returned from George W. Bush’s Iraq war with a less than honorable discharge and a series of flashbacks to the encounter with insurgents that cost him his career.” Jason was hoping to find some welcome peace at home, but instead finds himself in the middle of a complex plot involving avaricious real-estate speculators, crooked politicians, and neighborhood gangsters. His brother, Michael, has already become a casualty of this scheming. And now it falls to Jason and a woman cop angling for some professional redemption to protect his sibling’s 8-year-old son--who saw Michael’s killers--from being kidnapped and killed, too.

Reviewer Thayer seems impressed by Sakey’s characters and the mystery story pacing he establishes in At the City’s Edge. But, he concludes, it’s “a mystery somewhat lacking in credibility.”

You can read all of January’s review here.