This is the title of a new novel about V I which I finished writing a few weeks ago. My publisher likes it, so it’s a go. They haven’t given me a pub date yet, but look for it this coming fall, unless the publishing industry disappears completely. The book takes place in the present, in the ugly swamp of Cook County politics, but the crime has roots in the summer of 1966, when the city erupted in riots as white neighborhoods reacted to the “threat” of open housing. V I’s young cousin, Petra Warshawski, shows up in Hardball for the first time and the two of them, sometimes together, sometimes at odds, stir up some ugly looking Anacondas from the real and rhetorical marshes that underlie Chicago. I tried to figure out a way to link this blog to the opening chapters of the book, but couldn’t. If you want to read a couple of chapters, they’re available here: After December 15, the first two chapters will be available at the same link.