Realism presents a problem in this book.
The novel is set in Chicago. Chicago is portrayed as it really is and the novel incorporates some names of streets, parks, restaurants and bars, newspapers, famous or landmark buildings—and real job titles—because to do otherwise would destroy the illusion of reality sought.
To further heighten this illusion, I have scrupulously attempted to have my characters follow actual police and courtroom procedures during the unfolding of this story.
Nevertheless, the story is fiction. It did not happen. The characters are creatures of the author’s imagination. I know many policemen—and never met policemen with the names used in this book. I know many attorneys and never met prosecutors or defenders with the names given to the characters in this book. To further the sense of fiction, the policemen in this book work out of a special squad of Area One Homicide in police headquarters. At this writing, while there is a Homicide Review Section in headquarters, all Area One Homicide operations are located on the South Side.
I realize that using common Chicago ethnic names—O’Connor and DeVito and Ranallo and Flynn and Kovac and all the rest—might result in a coincidence in which a real policeman or prosecutor with one of those names might exist. But they are not the characters of this novel; the characters portrayed herein do not and are not intended to bear a resemblance to any person living or dead.