Book Review

By Derryll White

Howard  Shrier (2009). High Chicago.

I like reading novels by emerging Canadian writers. ‘High Chicago’ is Shrier’s second book, both featuring Toronto investigator Jonah Geller. There is enough different about this book to catch my interest early and hold it.  Geller is Jewish, which in itself is fairly unique.  I think of Stewart Kaminsky’s Lieberman and that’s about it for Jewish investigators.

The book brings environmental concerns to the fore, also quite different. Most intriguing, however, is the agency that Geller and his partner Jenn Raudsepp started – World Repairs!  Like Don Quixote and his windmills, these two take on cases that might repair the world, make it just a bit better of a place to live in.

This is a story of everyday capitalism gone sideways. It rings true, describing a believable Toronto corrupted by industrial waste, crooked contractors and unbelievable greed. Shrier tells a good, believable story in a direct way. He pushes the capabilities of language, the richness of human emotion and the descriptions of urban living just beyond everyday understanding. The result is a very enjoyable read from which the reader comes away enriched, more knowledgeable. And it is Canadian, which is for me another bonus.

URBAN LIVING – We were scrolling through floor plans of the penthouse units of the Berkshire Harbourview website, logged in as prospective buyers.  As if.  “These twelve-foot ceilings…. those windows…. those views.  And that kitchen, my God, it’s bigger than my whole top floor!”

KRAV MAGNA – …is a system of self-defence created by an Israeli army man.  It is more elemental than karate, teaching you how to use your own strengths and instincts to fight off attackers.  I had only recently gone back to it: it seemed more right for me now than the formal, scripted katas of shotokan.  Krav Magna assumes that every situation is life-and-death, that your attacker has to be put down with maximum efficiency.  It is not a sport; it will never be featured in the Olympics.

SHAME – you run if the odds are against you. There is no shame in that, Yoni.  There is only shame in getting killed when you can save yourself.  We like to say Krav Maga is about life and death, yes? But first and most, it’s about life.

BUREAUCRACY – ‘”You’re far more adept at getting people to open up.”  “Bureaucrats are not people,” she said.  “They’re like the last mussel on your plate, the one you keep avoiding because there’s no place to stick your fork in.”

TWISTED MUSEUM – The Chicago Tribune building is inlaid at eye level with stones liberated from some of the world’s most recognizable buildings and structures by intrepid Tribune correspondents of days gone by.  A tile from the Taj Mahal.  Stones from the Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China and the Alamo.  Souvenirs of Notre Dame and Westminster Abbey and Lincoln’s Tomb.  A twisted bit of metal from the World Trade Center next to a stone from the Mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent.  Even chunks of the Pyramids and the Parthenon – the ruined temple not the nightclub.

REALITY – Fixing a dislocated finger is not as easy as it looks in televised sports, where they yank it, tape it and send the guy back in.  You have to bend the finger backwards, like you did in hurting it, grip it from behind and push the base forward.  In lay terms, it hurts like fucking hell.

CAPITALISM – “Simon Birk,” he said, “Doesn’t put his own money into anything.  Not a nickel.  It’s all leveraged.  All of his buildings, all of his grand creations, he gets other people to put up the money.  Birk doesn’t give, understand?  He takes. He grabs. He milks.”

NEW WOMAN – ‘One fucking generation,” he complained.  “That’s all it took.  Like the Cold War – boom, suddenly it’s over and everyone’s asking what the fuck happened.  Wasn’t thirty, forty years ago, a man knew his place and a woman knew hers.  The oldtimers didn’t hear about it every time they put their hand on a woman’s leg, unless it was someone else’s woman.”

CAPITALISM – If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem.  If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem – J. Paul Getty

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org

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