St Valentine's Night Author:Andrew M Greeley Neil Connor, burned out TV correspondent and celebrity was convinced that you can't go home again, you can't return to your hometown, your Old Neighborhood, and your Old Lover. The Hometown would be dull, the neighborhood unfriendly, and the lover unattainable. Assigned to Chicago to cover an election, he never suspected that a grammar school re... more »union, which included both the Old Lover and an all too observant priest named Blackie Ryan could turn his life upside down.
The Hometown turned out to be exciting, the neighborhood thought Neil was a hero, and the lover was all too attainable and worth attaining. He tried to leave but it was already too late. Chicago, with its volatile politics and drug-ridden underworld, had become Beirut-on-the-Lake. Megan Lane, the beautiful woman whose life he had saved on St Valentine's morning long ago, again needed his help: She was now impoverished and suspected of fraud and murder. And the Neighborhood was weaving its old magic spell around him once more.
Its web would only hold him tighter and tighter, With Megan's four children despising him and his colleageues at the TV station turning against him, Neil would soon be caught between two warring drug gangs. He was swept up in political and racial conflict. Somehow he became responsible for solving the murder of Megan's husband, who had once been his best friend. He even tried to save a doomed teenage prostitute.
As he follows the dangerous thread of the investigation, he continues to turn up evidence that could definitely blacken the name of his love's ex-husband, whose death appears to be linked to a cocaine deal gone bad. Bullets and a new murder would follow--along with Megan's transformation from tender lover to raging fury.
In the background the ever watchful Blackie Ryan lurks, scheming and conniving to save Neil's life, happiness and immortal soul--aided and abetted by his old friends, the implacable North Wabash Avenue Irregulars.
Soon Neil will have the opportunity to return to New York. He has learned tat you can indeed go home again--and that it's perilous to do so especially when such desperate people as Megan Lane, Blackie Ryan and the Wabash Avenue Irregulars are involved. Escape beckons. So does love and life. And in a novel that is part thriller, part murder mystery and all love story, Andrew M Greeley will again take us into the heart and souls of characters we can identify with and cherish forever.« less