Little Altar Boy

by John Guzlowski

Overview

On a snowy Thursday night in Chicago, there is a knock on Detective Hank Purcell’s door. Sister Mary Philomena has seen something terrible at Saint Fidelis Church — a violation of all she holds sacred.

The next Monday, she is found murdered in the convent basement, next to a furnace stuffed with old papers and photographs.

And Margaret, Hank’s teenage daughter, has disappeared.

Hank and his unconventional partner Marvin Bondarowicz try to force their way through a wall of ecclesiastical silence to find the killer, while their search for Margaret takes them from swank lakeside flats to drug dens to south-side basement blues clubs…and the snow keeps falling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948403177
Publisher:	Kasva Press
Publication date:	05/26/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	322
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Born in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II, John Guzlowski came to America with his family as a Displaced Person in 1951. His parents had been Polish slave laborers in Nazi Germany during the war. Growing up in “Murdertown” — the tough immigrant neighborhoods around Humboldt Park in Chicago — he met hardware-store clerks with Auschwitz tattoos on their wrists, Polish cavalry officers who still mourned their dead horses, and women who had walked from Siberia to Iran to escape the Russians. In much of his work, Guzlowski remembers and honors the experiences and ultimate strength of these voiceless survivors. An acclaimed poet, Guzlowski is also a respected teacher, literary critic, and author of both fiction and nonfiction. His recent poetry collection Echoes of Tattered Tongues won the 2017 Montaigne Medal of the Eric Hoffer Awards as one of the most thought-provoking books of the year. Guzlowski received his BA in English Literature from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and his MA and PhD in English from Purdue University. He is a Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Eastern Illinois University, and currently lives in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Editorial Reviews

03/30/2020

Set in 1967, Guzlowski’s downbeat sequel to 2018’s Suitcase Charlie finds hard-bitten, morally upright Chicago police detective Hank Purcell looking into some grim crimes. At the urging of Sister Mary Philomena, Hank and his quirky, iconoclastic partner, Marvin Bondarowicz, both WWII vets with memories of terrible things that men can do, confront a pedophile priest at her church, but the man denies the allegations. Days later, Sister Mary is found dead in the church basement, stabbed three dozen times. The church stonewalls the investigation. Meanwhile, Hank’s 19-year-old daughter, Margaret, goes missing. His inquiries make it clear she’s fallen in with a bad, druggy crowd. When an 11-year-old altar boy is discovered hanged in a closet, the bleakness of the world really hits Hank and Marvin, who resort to their fists and the bottle while failing to get much traction with either of the murder cases. The resolution of the crimes—including Margaret’s disappearance—brings little satisfaction to either the dogged detectives or the reader. This is strictly for those who prefer the darkest of hard-boiled fiction. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Listed as Crime Fiction Lover's Top 5 Books of the Year!

“Little Altar Boy is a book that never takes the easy way out, and Guzlowski doesn’t arrange events for a tidy, Hollywood-style ending. Instead, what he writes is true to his characters in a way that will draw you in, tight.”

Crime Fiction Lover

"Dark, gripping, graphic, gritty... Little Altar Boy offers no easy answers. It's a realistic, hard-boiled, noir tale that deftly captures the diverse attitudes and emotions of the times."

Lansing State Journal

"John Guzlowski’s powerful Little Altar Boy centers on the fatal stabbing of a Chicago nun. Set in 1967, Mr. Guzlowski’s latest takes place a decade after events in his equally memorable Suitcase Charlie, which also featured Windy City detective Hank Purcell and his partner Marvin Bondarowicz."

Wall Street Journal

"Little Altar Boy once again features Hank Purcell and Marvin Bondarowicz, whom we met in Suitcase Charlie and are happy to see again... In the classic procedural that follows, the cops choke down their own cynicism to investigate a crime that officially doesn’t exist."

New York Times

2020-03-02
A Chicago nun tells a cop she trusts that she witnessed a priest doing something wrong with an altar boy; when the nun is murdered, the case becomes complicated and political.

Detectives Hank Purcell and Marvin Bondarowicz know that Chicago in the 1960s is a tough town, and although it’s been a decade since they worked the case of dismembered bodies that Guzlowski wrote about in Suitcase Charlie (2018), they still don’t hold out much hope that powerful, guilty parties will ever be held responsible. As they work the case, Hank especially is distracted because his 19-year-old daughter, Margaret, has gone missing after having gotten involved with drug-dealing hippies. The author, who grew up in Chicago, once again gets the period details right, from prejudices to politics. The dialogue, about as politically incorrect to modern ears as possible, is realistic, witty, and often bleak—these are tough guys, survivors of World War II, with little sympathy for anyone.

Readers who want a vivid portrait of an earlier time will find much to appreciate, but don't look for optimism.

Kirkus Reviews