The Maxwell Street Blues

In The Maxwell Street Blues, the third novel in Michael Raleigh's Paul Whelan series of private eye novels, Whelan is hired by an elderly jazz musician to look in to the murder of his boyhood friend, a dealer in Chicago's great open-air flea market, Maxwell Street. Whelan's investigation leads him into the dealer's past, and uncovers old feuds and wounds and an interracial romance. The story takes Whelan into some of Chicago's oldest neighborhoods and most interesting communities and introduces him to a rich, often funny cast of characters.