Book Review: The Back Door to Heaven
The Back Door to Heaven, by Bob Allen
Published by Purple Tooth Publishing, Nov. 18, 2024, paperback, 266 pages
Reviewed by Dennis Hetzel
You won’t find a book that feels more like Chicago, especially for you South Siders out there, than Bob Allen’s new novel, The Back Door to Heaven. You don’t have to hail from Chicago to enjoy the story, but it makes things more fun if you are.
Allen, a lifelong Chicagoan “mostly on the south side” according to his bio, has crafted a thoughtful, interesting political mystery about a complex father-son relationship brought to a crisis point during election season (is it ever NOT the political season in Chicago?) when the son, Tom Sullivan, faces a murder charge.
The South Side is as much a character as any person in Allen’s story, complete with corner bars, Old Style beer, and the bungalow homes that sprinkle the neighborhoods.
It’s the time of year all Chicagoans know when the snow turns into gray ice, and bitter winds suggest that spring is only a dream.
On the human side, ward politics emit the usual whiffs of corruption in the name of public service, so pretty much everyone looks the other way. Key characters knock on every door to get out the vote. Most of the collars remain working-class and blue, but the ethnic colors are shifting from white to black and brown in more of the once-settled neighborhoods.
There we meet Pat Sullivan, who looks forward to retirement after working decades for “The City,” as all natives simply call Chicago. Pat has one more election to captain to ensure that Eddie Byrne, the incumbent alderman in his ward, gets reelected. Byrne’s past campaigns have been slam dunks, but this time he faces a Black candidate making inroads.
At the same time, Pat’s wife is battling cancer when his son is accused of murdering his ex-wife’s companion. Friends and family see Tom as basically a good guy with a bit of an anger management problem, an unlikely suspect despite the bad vibes from his marriage.
Pat posts bail for his son, using his home as collateral. But Tom, fearful of the consequences with evidence stacked again him, goes on the lam, and it puts much more than Tom’s home at risk as Tom tries to find Pat and starts poking at the larger questions surrounding the murder.
Once the story gets rolling, you’ll be invested in Pat and Tom, and you’ll want to know who did the killing. In the tradition of almost all good thrillers, Allen does an excellent job of weaving all the plot threads together in a climax that unfolds around a real-life Lithuanian monument in Chicago’s Marquette Park.
I only had a few quibbles. It’s fine when characters don’t do things you expect, except when you don’t get an explanation for why. Pat doesn’t consider sharing vital information with his son’s lawyer at a moment when it seems really apparent he should do so. Pat’s ward boss and one of the book’s potentially most interesting characters, Alderman Byrne, needed more development to help us understand his motivations.
But the story and moments of exceptional writing dissolve those quibbles. Consider this passage, as Pat ponders life and the “what’s next” after the death of his beloved wife, Mary, whose cancer was far worse than he knew:
“Maybe I’m just an asshole, thought Pat. He knew sinners went to hell; that was a given, but where do the assholes go? Is there some Purgatory where maybe assholes enter a conditional program to get to Heaven, like a minor traffic ticket …. Mary is there, that’s for sure. Maybe she would come to him and give him some coded message about how he can get in, like sneaking into a drive-in movie through a hole in the fence. Maybe that’s why she went first. Mary was casing the joint for the rest of them … “
There’s something about those lines that is so Chicago and so wise, don’t you think? The Back Door to Heaven gives you a taste of Chicago you probably can’t find at the typical tourist sites.
