Ten top books about Chicago

Andrew Rosenheim's novels include Fear Itself and The Little Tokyo Informant. He grew up in Chicago and in a small town in Michigan, and then went on to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1977.

One of Rosenheim's top ten books about Chicago, as shared at the Guardian:

The Death of the Detective by Mark Smith

Although nominated for a National Book award when it was published in 1975, this novel remains a much undervalued classic. A retired detective Arnold Magnuson gets drawn into the search for a serial killer who may be linked to a suppressed scandal from years before. Magnuson's labours take him all over a city that he finds bewilderingly changed. Tense and strongly plotted, full of memorable characters, this novel nonetheless stands out for the calibre of its writing. Its descriptions of Chicago are even better than Bellow's, and for its prose alone it should live as long as any of the books on this list.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see: Five books that show real life in Chicago.

--Marshal Zeringue