Flying from his expatriate digs in Paris, famous novelist Jimmy O'Neill lands in his home city, Chicago, and literally bumps into Lynnie, the love of his youth. Lynnie is now a business-woman, widowed mother of five and still gorgeous. The flame between the two burns anew, leading Jimmy into a fight for her honor. Corrupt politicians are about to indict Lynnie on trumped-up charges of bribery, a threat the novelist tries to dispel by oneupmanship against the Chicago archbishop, district attorney and others. This is the heart of the plot in Greeley's novel ["Death in April"], hard to extract from a mass of excesses including views on modern literature, the mob, Roman Catholicism, discrimination, etc. It's even harder to care for or believe in any of the characters or the situations the author has manufactured, and the ending is simply ridiculous.

A review of "Death in April," in...