The novel is set in big city America. Chicago, to be specific. Where, like most cities, people, places, and things have changed. Some for the better. A lot for the worse. The hero, protagonist, and narrator of the story is Eddie Miles, a cab driver who knows the city just about as well as any city can be known. He’s addicted to it like some men are addicted to booze or bad women. And he’s addicted to driving his hack. A job he bitches about, but can’t seem to quit.

The plot of Nobody’s Angel is rather straightforward. Hookers are getting killed. More frequently than usual. Cabbies are becoming casualties too. The mean streets of Chicago have gotten a lot meaner. And one cabbie, Eddie, isn’t content to count on the cops to bring it all under control. Not when he’s likely to find himself looking up from the wrong end of a cold slab in the morgue.

Luckily though, this is not a novel about the Taxi Driver as avenger. There are too many avenger novels anyway. Eddie’s the kind of guy who wants to set things right, but he’s not the kind to go on a Death Wish mission to take out all the low-lifes who might be possible suspects. Rather he watches, and waits, and listens. And as he does, we learn a lot about the Midwest’s biggest city. We learn that cab drivers never go South. That they never go West when they can avoid it. And they don’t go East because there’s nothing there except Lake Michigan. They ply their trade in the North part of the city. Back and forth to O’Hare airport. The streets and roads that intertwine through the Loop, Downtown and Uptown, River North, Old Town, Lincoln Park, the Gold Coast, Lake Shore Drive to Sheridan or Evanston, maybe even Skokie. But never toward Cicero. That’s south and cabbies don’t go South.

To those who know Chicago, as does The Fiction Fortune Hunter, having been a resident for ten years, you quickly realize all of the cabbie creed is really about race. The South Side of Chicago is predominantly black. Poor black. You avoid it simply because that’s where the trouble is. Shootings. Stabbings. Gang assault. Armed robbery. That’s what you’re avoiding, just as any war zone would be. Do the good, descent people of the South Side get a bad deal because of that? Absolutely. But that’s just the way it is. Nobody wants to drop off a cleaning lady in the middle of the night and have to deadhead back through neighborhoods even the cops stay away from unless they get a call. Nobody’s Angel was written in the mid nineties. But things hadn’t changed that much when I was there from 2000 to 2010.

A cabbie’s life is fraught with peril. There’s always the risk of robbery or worse. There’s mean, or sick drunks in the back of the cab. There’s the tricksters who con you into taking them where they want to go, then bolt when it’s time to pay the fare. There’s long hours, low pay, and lots and lots of restrictions. The author, ,Jack Clark, uses those “do’s and don’ts” from the City of Chicago, Department of Consumer Services, Public Vehicles Operations Division to start each chapter. Often juxtaposing the good intent of the directive with the unintended consequence of actually following it. He’s very familiar with both. Still being a taxi driver as well as a novelist.

The Angel of the title is actually Eddie himself. You have to determine, once you’ve come to the end of the ride, whether it’s a proper label or not.

Tight. Fast. Hard-hitting, Nobody’s Angel delivers an urban mystery cold as its icy streets and cutting as Chicago’s raw wind. There’s little to no sympathy in this tale. But there is humanity. And that’s something you take wherever you can find it.

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