Campbell sets his stories in the great city of Chicago, steeped in the world of patronage and favor for favor. Flannery is no detective, but he seems to always be stumbling on corpses and, when he does someone the favor of investigating the situation, more times than not there is some politician whose put out the word to warn him off.

Flannery is a sewer inspector and precinct captain and, in the Chicago tradition, he seems to spend more of his time doing favors than anything else. Some of the best scenes are when Flannery sets out to talk to a political connection and he learns whose leaning on who.

Like a lot of the Flannery mysteries, this one has a plot extremely reminiscent of old time paperback mystery novels. A beautiful model disappears and Flannery starts nosing around and trying to find some answers. On the way, he trips over a corpse, a retired madam, a lonesome salesman, a photographer and a well-connected politician. And this model might not be as innocent and pure as Flannery once thought.

Campbell does a great job of setting out the narrator's voice and placing this story in the neighborhoods of Chicago. ( )