Arnold Magnuson has little left to lose. Loss has left the cop teetering on the brink of sanity. He puts everything into tracking down the killer known as the Death Maker. His hunt will take him into the darkest heart of Chicago, where everyone and everything seems capable of terrible things, even Magnuson himself

This book is a difficult read. Many passages are written in a stream-of-consciousness form with slippery sentence structure. The story itself deals with many characters on many levels, and the words surrounding every major character are similar to a visit to the clock factory for the full manufacturing process to introduce the time of day. I am a very fast reader, so I could plow through the verbiage and keep the story rolling. The vocabulary is large - this is the first book in years where I had to stop and look up the meaning of a word. The title is correct: everybody dies, including the detective, but all the characters are interesting, though none were very likeable. This is definitely a book you will enjoy plowing though, and the bragging rights will be the payoff.

Mark Smith is one helluva writer. The Death of the Detective is complex yet hazy, with a million details both enumerated and obfuscated, not unlike a day in Chicago, the city in which it is set. All told, an enormously satisfying read. Tremendous thanks go to Net Galley and Brash Books for the DRC.

The time period is the post-war era. With the Great Depression well behind it and World War II a recent triumph, the USA is at the pinnacle of its wealth and worldwide power. The Death of the Detective is spun around the lives of a handful of men , all in Chicago during this time period, men whose lives intersect and then trail away from each other, sometimes joining again, and sometimes not. The style is a lot like that last sentence, compound sentences that last a long time and yet build up to something rather than becoming unwieldy. I have never read a voice like his before.

But back to our story. First we have the protagonist, Magnuson. He is retired from his life as the head of a locally famous security firm, and life has not been the same after his wife died. He is depressed. He’s invited old friends over to play cards and perhaps talk about their glory days, but the evening is ruined, because one of them has invited a man he detests without consulting Magnuson first. He is so irritated that eventually he abandons his guests and goes to bed. If only he would stay there!

Next up we have Farquarson, at least for a short time. Farquarson is a wealthy old man, and a mean one. Perhaps it is fortunate that he is dying. Unfortunately, he has just enough time and evil intent to send out a number of extremely unkind messages, some of them whispered, others sent as poison pen letters through the US mail. Once he is gone, his parting actions send things spinning in all sorts of directions, disrupting and ending the lives of good and decent people…and others’ also.

In addition there is Cavan. Cavan has lived his life in the self-absorbed, irresponsible, idly dilettantish manner of a sole heir to a vast fortune. After all, Farquarson has no children, and he is the only nephew. He spends and drinks recklessly while planning his scholarly (and expensive) trip to Africa. His field is anthropology, and his budget is one he assumes to be bottomless. What a surprise he has awaiting him.

Finally, we have our assassin. The man would probably be considered bipolar today; he has delusions of grandeur and a lot of other strange notions too. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital, but then getting over the wall is sometimes just a matter of persistence and athletic ability. Once he is out, he takes on a number of identities, foremost among them, Death. How fortunate, then, that he has wandered into a murder mystery where he can be useful.

At times, Smith’s noir fiction is reminiscent of the late, great Donald Westlake. At one point I was surprised to find myself laughing out loud over a wry turn of events.

Smith’s well-braided story also pulls in additional supporting players with more limited roles. We have a klatch of criminals, members of an organized syndicate, and we also have some hoods that want in and will do terrible things to prove themselves. We have local cops. We also have an assortment of young people associated with Cavan, as well as ordinary people across whose paths our story marches.

Because we’re all in this together, ultimately.

One thing of which the prospective reader should be aware is that the main characters are all Caucasian, and they are generally racist. The “N” word drops in now and then, and although its use is entirely consistent with the characters who are either using it out loud or thinking it—think of white Chicago businessmen and cops during the 1950s and 1960s—it is jarring. Perhaps it would have been more offensive simply to assume, as many writers still do, that characters in the story are all Caucasian; yet I think I would have enjoyed the novel more without that particular word, and perhaps with fewer racist statements and thoughts by the characters involved. This is my sole complaint about what is otherwise a truly outstanding mystery.

Smith is brilliant at conveying the emotions and thoughts of his characters through action. This reviewer was hooked at the end of the first paragraph, when the man in the diner cut his meat and then stole the knife. Smith’s internal dialogues are lengthy but so well done that rather than reacting with impatience, the reader must instead feel as if she is getting extra time with a remarkable story for no extra cost. His facility with figurative language, particularly simile, metaphor, and repetition are so skillful that I found myself flagging pages to share with students I no longer teach. It was both wondrous and disappointing.

I no longer have my students, but I have you, reader, and unlike most of them, you read what I have to say by choice. Pay attention! Sit up straight! Spit out your gum! Oh hell, I’m sorry; I forgot myself for a moment.

What I really want to point out is that not only do I consider this book well worth your time and money, but it was nominated for a National Book Award, and the author has an impressive list of credentials. But had he not, I would still recommend this amazing novel on its own merits. Originally released in 2007, it was re-released February 3, 2015. Get it and enjoy!

this book stunned me and I need to find out more about this writer; the work is dense and allusive and interior. my problem was to do with focus - Magnusson could be a great central character but for me he was lost in the over-writing describing him and his aims, and the entire book is permeated with an old fear, and with a sense of fatality that is hard to tolerate for the length of the book - i'd say that was my real problem with this book. strangely in sections, it read very well, and then sometimes there were blocks of type describing a person's actions, establishing an atmosphere of destiny, i suppose, so it was effective in raising alarums, but the underlying conspiratorial story of an ancient wrongdoing by Farquarson eluded me for far too long, and I could not sometimes discern who was the referent. I give it the benefit of the doubt in order to tip my hat to the powerful atmospheric writing, and the cartoon like figures who merge right in.

In 1973 Mark Smith published this classic noir murder mystery set in Chicago. At over 700 pages, it may seem daunting, but the discerning reader's effort will be rewarded with beautiful prose, fascinating characters, and a plot rich with action that takes one on a tour of the urban and suburban landscapes and psyches of Chicagoland.

Reissued by Brash Books on Feb. 2, 2015; reviewed from an e-book galley furnished by Net Galley.

Even though it is 40 years old, The Death of the Detective was brand new to me and has as much impact as if it were written last week. On the surface the plot is very familiar: a grizzled detective is summoned to a friend's deathbed only to find him murdered, and he must solve the mystery and bring the killer to justice.

The difference in The Death of the Detective is this: there is no mystery for the reader. From the opening pages we know there is an escaped mental patient looking to take vengeance on the eventual victim. This leads to the subversion of many genre conventions. The detective, Magnuson, theorizes vast conspiracies and multiple suspects with imagined motives for the killing, and all the while the reader knows that he is wrong and all of the conclusions he is coming to are ultimately meaningless. Continuing with the "no mystery" theme, multiple chapters (and indeed the title of the novel) are entitled "The Death of...", revealing a character's fate early and taking any suspense out of the equation.

This vast novel is full of characters, some only tangentially connected to the main "plot." Each of them has their own history that once revealed can change the entire way they are viewed. The character of Tanker is the best example of this; he is easy to write off as a young street punk, but in the space of a few pages his back story makes him in to a tragic figure.

The Death of the Detective is a postmodern crime story, using the genre format as a launching pad for a deeper discussion. It is a story without catharsis, where random brutality has no deeper meaning, where nihilism seems to be the only belief that makes sense. It is a grim, dense read, and I can understand how readers that didn't know what they were getting in to hated it. It is in a rough position because genre fans will get something they don't expect (or want) and the literary crowd could write it off as just another private eye paperback.

Thank you to Brash Books for republishing this masterpiece and bringing it to the attention of a new generation of readers. I hope it gets the recognition it so richly deserves. 5 stars, highest recommendation.