Three Boys Missing by James A. Jack

January 1, 2024

Three Boys Missing by James A. Jack

On Sunday, October 16, 1955, three boys from the Jefferson Park neighborhood in northwest Chicago went to a movie at a downtown movie theater. They never returned home and were found murdered two days later. James Jack was one of the original detectives assigned to search for the missing children, and he details the case. The investigators were under pressure to solve the case quickly - little did they know that it would take 40 years to bring the killer to justice.

I live just north of Jefferson Park and I know the areas in this book very well. This crime occurred in the pre-Internet era, and police work was very different in the 1950s than it is today. Now there are surveillance cameras everywhere and there have been great advances in DNA testing. It does seem like the police spent a lot of time chasing down pointless leads. A number of the officers had fixed or pre-conceived ideas about who committed the crime - one of the persistent ideas was that a gang of teenagers had killed the boys. Most of the suspects brought in for questioning were guilty of something, just not of murdering the three boys. One witness starts filming the scene and a police officer is disgusted and confiscates the film - they'd be shocked that in 2023, everyone has a camera on their cell phone and people record everything. With law enforcement agencies not cooperating or communicating with each other, it was a wonder than any crimes were solved.

Milwaukee Avenue where much of the action in the book takes place, in the 1950s

Where the Dead Lie by C. S. Harris

 December 6, 2020

Where the Dead Lie by C. S. Harris

When the body of a homeless child is found on the grounds of an abandoned factory, Inspector Lovejoy requests the assistance of Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin.  Devlin has assisted Lovejoy in the past when crimes involve members of the aristocracy, and Lovejoy suspects that someone from the upper classes is preying on street children, luring them with promises but torturing and murdering them instead.  Sebastian's investigation leads him through the underworld haunts of depraved aristocrats to find the murderer.

This is book #12 in the Sebastian St. Cyr series and it does not disappoint, although the subject matter does make for difficult reading at times.  Wonderful details about Regency life among both the upper and lower classes, great supporting characters like Sebastian's wife Hero and his surgeon friend, and great research on the social and political climate of the day make this a stellar historical mystery.