You’re there, in your high-collared, ankle-skimming wool coat, striding on Michigan Avenue or Wacker Drive, on the kind of morning where the notion of a high temperature even flirting with double-digit-dom is a fantasy… and you’ve got to solve a sticky-wicket of a mystery. A mystery that may have less give than the hard sheet of frost facing you on the sidewalk ahead.

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Mysteries, of course, don’t wait for the weather to shake off the ice, or every obvious lead to fold into place, or for every potential interviewee to offer oodles of can’t-be-contradicted evidence. But the brave investigative reporter at the center of David M. Hamlin’s Winter in Chicago gamely lets the little inconveniences, major misdirects, and occasional brick walls (the one that can so often pop up when a reporter’s on the almost-right trail) fall by the wayside. You’re alongside Emily as she looks beyond the obvious surface to find out just what happened to a friend’s sad end, and you’re at her side as she faces down, and rises above, the wrongheaded but ever-present expectations of “a woman’s place” in the reporting world of the 1970s.

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It’s the you’re-there-ness that gives Mr. Hamlin’s book its authentic Chicago-style gusto. It’s a gusto that makes both the story’s central mystery and its vibrant, snappy characters (nefarious and true-blue alike) as flavorful as a slice of deep-dish pizza, with extra mozzarella.

It’s a slice that incorporates numerous tangy ingredients, from the changing world of news to the relationship between local politicos and reporters to the vital roles both rock music and DJs played during the era of gas shortages and post-Watergate tremors.

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If you can transport back to the Chicago of the 1970s, and slip into a radio station, and peek at an ongoing investigation of a thorny case, you’ve clearly built a time machine. Better yet, grab Winter in Chicago and transport back via the pages, and characters, to a moment of chilly temps, hot leads, and a distinctively drawn time in a wonderfully distinctive, couldn’t-be-any-other town.

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