Review: ‘The Kiss of Night’

My favorite memory of visiting Chicago: A pub crawl with my wife that included a dark, tipsy detour down Wooden Alley, the narrow lane paved with tens of thousands of wood blocks behind the official residence of the city’s Roman Catholic cardinal.

Catholicism, Chicago, and heavy drinking all feature prominently in The Kiss of Night, the gripping literary debut of Mark Wukas. A lifelong Chicagoan, Wukas was our guide that night, and his love for the Windy City – and all its grit – hasn’t faded with the years.

Mark Wukas, author of ‘The Kiss of Night’

Will Moore is a classics scholar who arrives in Chicago for grad school only to have his fiancée back East dump him. Despite no journalism experience, he changes career course and takes a job as a reporter for the venerable City News Bureau.

The hours are 5 p.m. to 2 a.m., and Chicago at night is an unforgiving teacher. It introduces Will to a netherworld of gangs, drugs, and violent death. He sprinkles his observations with quips from Greek and Roman philosophers, which you don’t find in every crime novel.

Will also meets veteran cop Frank Foley. When the reporter becomes part of a murder plot, his often-fraught relationship with Foley propels the story to a memorable climax. And each man finds he owes the other a debt he cannot repay.

The Kiss of Night is sold through Eckhartz Press in (where else?) Chicago. I receive no compensation from the link. The book is not available from Amazon.