Dirty Little War: A Crime Novel

by Dietrich Kalteis

For readers of Elmore Leonard and George Pelecanos, a tense crime novel set in mob-filled Chicago during the 1920s Prohibition


It’s 1920 and the start of Prohibition. Circumstances beyond his control find a young man, Huckabee Waller, involved in the death of a gangster in his hometown of New Orleans. Fearing repercussions from the gangster’s associates, Huck hops a northbound freight and heads for the promise of Chicago.


Expecting to make an honest living, he’s surprised to find that he’s arrived at the epicenter of crime, corruption, and commerce. Unable to find legitimate work, he gets mixed up in bare-knuckle fights run by the notorious North Side Gang. Reviving his skills as a club fighter, Huck quickly becomes a crowd favorite and makes enough to get by. When it becomes apparent to him that the gang is also heavily involved in running illegal whiskey, a very profitable enterprise, he’s drawn into their world by the desire for more.


As Huck starts running booze across the Canadian border for the North Side Gang and gets tangled up in Chicago’s taxi wars, tensions between them and the South Side Gang flare up, and soon he’s in the crosshairs of enforcer Al Capone. The smart thing to do would be to get out of Chicago — fast — that is if the life he wants to leave behind doesn’t kill him first.

Genres: Crime

488 pages, Paperback

Published March 18, 2025

About the author

Dietrich Kalteis is the critically acclaimed author of thirteen novels and winner of the 2022 Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for Best Crime Novel for Under an Outlaw Moon. His first novel, Ride the Lightning, won the bronze medal for Best Regional Fiction in the Independent Publisher Book Awards in 2015. House of Blazes was his fourth novel and won the silver medal for Best Historical Fiction in the Independent Publisher Book Awards in 2017. His screenplay Between Jobs is a past finalist in the Los Angeles Screenplay Contest. He enjoys life with his family on Canada’s West Coast.

Visit his website: http://www.dietrichkalteis.com/

He regularly contributes at Off the Cuff: http://www.dietrichkalteis.blogspot.ca/

And at 7 Criminal Minds:
http://www.7criminalminds.blogspot.ca/

You can also find him on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/dietrich.kalt...

and Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dietrichkalteis/

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. In reality, the long and storied history of Chicago includes the great taxicab wars between Yelloevcabs and checker cabs of 1920 and 1921, which included shootings, bombings, and all out street battles that rocked the city. Kalteis brings these legendary wars to life through the fictional character of Huckabee Waller, who left New Orleans in a hurry after a barroom disagreement over whether merely talking to a lady required paying for her time, a disagreement resulting in the death on the barroom floor of one well-connected pimp. Hopping trains brings young Huck to the railyards of Chicago where he earns some money in boxing matches, ones where he was supposed to take a dive and refused. From there, he goes on to ferrying booze from Canada during prohibition and offers security services to Yellow which was feeling the brunt of attacks from Checkered.

Huck is in the middle of mob wars between bootleggers and the ensuing and ever expanding hijinks of the taxi wars. Tough nut that he is, Huck is humanized by his romance with a dime a dance girl, who wants him to make an honest living. But with the Capones involved, Huck gets word that the only way out of the wars is in a six-foot wooden box. One side will never accept his quitting and the other wants vengeance, pure and simple.

This rich thick novel is filled with action, some defying credulity, some simply bare knuckles brawling. If you have any interest in the gangster wars of 1920’s Chicago, this novel is something special.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Dirty Little War by Dietrich Kalteis, Huckabee “Huck” Waller finds himself in deep trouble in 1920s Louisiana, forcing him to either flee the state or stay behind and face even more trouble from some nasty people. Huck decides to flee and travels to Chicago by hopping trains with little more than the clothes on his back, his fists, and a desire to find fair work for a fair wage.

Unable to find lasting work for a decent wage—and because Huck is good with his fists and has a concrete skull—he participates in “toe the line” bare-knuckle fights to make a living. Soon, Huck garners the attention of local Chicago mobsters and lowlifes, who are eager to take advantage of Huck’s brawling skills. Through them, Huck begins his journey through 1920s Chicago.

After one brutal fight, Huck is left unconscious and robbed, then dumped in an alley. He’s taken to a hospital, where he becomes enamored with a nurse who seems immune to his charms and even refuses to tell him her name. Later, at a dance hall where women dance for tickets, Huck encounters the same nurse, who continues to act as though she has never met him—only increasing his infatuation.

Weary of the repeated hard knocks in bare-knuckle fighting, Huck starts running illegal booze and quickly excels thanks to his creativity, driving skills, and willingness to use violence in the ruthless Chicago underworld. Around the same time, Huck signs up as an enforcer for John D. Hertz in a violent battle against a rival taxi company. Hertz hires Huck to ensure his competition becomes less competitive. In taking Hertz’s job, Huck is forced to choose sides among the numerous mob factions prowling Chicago and beyond—including crossing paths with an up-and-coming gangster named Alphonse Capone.

The novel follows Huck as he tries to court the unyielding nurse while becoming more entangled with the mob. Despite his involvement in the criminal world, Huck maintains a surprising level of integrity, using violence only against those within the mob and steering clear of innocents. He also becomes a surrogate authority figure to a young, streetwise boy who is initially suspicious of Huck’s motives but soon discovers there is more to him than thick-as-leather fists, violence, and fast driving.

Dietrich Kalteis’s Dirty Little War reads like an epic tale of 1920s gangsterism, unfolding at a deliberate pace. It’s not a blindingly fast page-turner but rather a well-crafted story with elements of actual history and real figures from the 1920s. The characters are richly developed, with illustrative backgrounds and depth, adding a sense of historical accuracy that enhances the novel’s appeal.

Dirty Little War is set to be published in March 2025 and is recommended for fans of crime novels with a strong historical flavor, including a mix of real-life characters and fiction.

This review was originally published at MysteryandSuspense.com. NetGalley provided an ARC in exchange for an honest review and is set for publication in March of 2025.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking forward to reading Dirty Little War after enjoying Crooked: A Crime Novel by the same author - and this did not disappoint.

I was familiar with the Prohibition era, but I didn't know much about the Chicago taxi wars, so I found that to be pretty interesting.

Prohibition gangsters or taxi wars could make a good story on their own, but I enjoyed how the author combined the two and blended history with fiction through the main character's experiences.

I look forward to reading more by Dietrich Kalteis.

Thanks to ECW Press for the ARC.

[Willy Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taking a dive is not Huckabee Waller’s style, much to the displeasure of the gangsters taking bets on the bare-knuckle fights near Chicago’s stockyards. It’s 1920, and Prohibition is the law of the land. Huck, who hopped a boxcar heading north after killing a pimp in New Orleans, turns to earning a living in illegal boxing matches. Impressed by Huck’s pugilistic skills and his past as a Louisiana moonshine runner, Dean O’Banion, head of the notorious North Side Gang, recruits Huck into smuggling booze across the Canadian border. Huck also runs a sideline as security for John D. Hertz’s Yellow Cab Company, which is involved in a vicious and violent competition with Morris Markin’s Checker Taxi. Soon Huck is rolling in dough, but his new luxurious lifestyle comes at a cost. When his new wife, Karla, urges him to find more legitimate employment, hitman Gypsy Doyle reminds Huck that the only way out “is feet first and horizontal.” Winner of the 2022 Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for Best Crime Novel (for Under an Outlaw Moon), Kalteis has written a tough, epic historical noir that covers the most tumultuous decade in Chicago’s mob history. The Zelig-like Huck encounters infamous mobsters of the era (O’Banion, Johnny Torrio, Vincent Drucci, Al Capone) and becomes tangentially involved in some of the most notorious killings (St. Valentine’s Day massacre). As the body count rises, Kalteis’s punchy, hard-boiled prose vividly captures the brutality behind the glitz of the Jazz Age. Fans of Max Allan Collins’s Nathan Heller historical mysteries and The Road to Perdition will enjoy this gritty novel.

[Jim Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent prohibition era historical fiction of Huck Waller fighting (literally) his way into Chicago's gangster scene and taxi wars and soon realizing that there's only one way out.

[Ken MacQueen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meet Huckabee (Huck) Waller, the latest complex creation of crime writer extraordinaire Dietrich Kalteis.
Kalteis’s forthcoming novel, Dirty Little War, continues his recent fixation with American prohibition-era gangsterism. It is a target-rich environment, ruthless, exciting and blood-soaked.
This one follows on the heels of Under an Outlaw Moon and Crooked. Like its predecessors, Dirty Little War brilliantly captures an era where gangsters were both public enemies and headline-grabbing folk heroes, aided and abetted by corruption at every level of government, judiciary and media.
If all that sound sounds uncomfortably current, realize the author has turned back the clock a century to the early days of prohibition, where America was awash in smuggled booze, thanks to the porous border with Canada. It was a time before the stock market crash of 1929, when crooks raked in such obscene profits that the cash was weighed rather than counted.
Enter Huck Waller who hopped a freight from a world of trouble in 1920s Louisiana, and arrived penniless in Chicago. At this point we know little about Huck except he’s an illiterate, bare-knuckle brawler with fists of fury, a cement head and dreams of a better life.
He also is blessed or burdened with a stubborn, if flexible, integrity that begins to emerge early on when he refuses to follow orders to throw his first fight. Since these fights are staged by underworld low-lives there’s a sense that Huck is not long for this world.
And yet, even as he’s sucked deeper into gangland Chicago, he seems to cheat death thanks to his fists, his native intelligence and the fact that he’s a curiosity in this amoral world. Is he friend, is he foe, is he going to survive to the end of the chapter?
Along the way, Huck informally adopts Izzy a street-wise urchin, who teaches him to read. And he falls in love with Karla Bow, a nurse reduced to selling dances in a mangy bar when she isn’t patching up Huck’s various injuries.
As always, Kalteis peppers his tale with actual events, like the infamous Chicago taxi war between Yellow and Checker cabbies, and real characters including mobsters Al Capone and his hated rival Bugs Moran. That open warfare led to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, where seven of Moran’s gang were machinegunned in a Chicago garage, supposedly on Capone’s orders.
Kalteis deftly uses that infamous event, and its fallout to craft a brilliant dénouement.
This is a slower build than many of Kaleis’s novels, but he uses the time to bring Chicago to life in all its gritty glory.
As for Huck, whether he lives or dies, this guy ain’t spillin’.
Let’s just say the author gives him a front-row seat at a raw and raucous time in Chicago history. Think of Huck as a lethal, reluctantly mobbed-up Forest Gump, and enjoy the ride.

ECW Press provided an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[John Lansing · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review for Dietrich Kalteis’, Dirty Little War:

Dietrich Kalteis’ Dirty Little War has the gift of taking readers back in a literary time machine where they can lose themselves in 1920’s Chicago. Prohibition is fully in play and the city is run by four different mobs who thrive filling the speakeasys with bootlegged beer and whiskey from across the Canadian border. The politicians and police were on the dole and in the gang’s pockets.

Dietrich tells the story of Huck, his protagonist, who has thick skin, and a big heart. Dietrich’s dialogue is impeccable. His 20’s slang rings true.

It’s not easy to make a criminal appealing, but Dietrich pulls it off. I found myself rooting for Huck, white-knuckled behind the wheel of his Model T Ford, driving a carload full of bootlegged booze across the border with the cops on his tail, and bullets pinging off his bumper.

Dietrich paints a vivid picture of life during prohibition, where the only way uneducated men could make enough money to survive was running booze, and staying one step ahead of the law. The only honest men getting rich were funeral directors. It was dangerous work and the men needed nerves of steel.

Huck’s plan… to stash enough money to marry the woman he loves, raise a family, put food on the table, and God willing, make it out of the mob alive. Dirty Little War is a ride you won’t regret taking.

—John Lansing, National Bestselling Author of The Jack Bertolino Series

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's story line driven and the characters I found most enjoyable end up sidelined for most of the second half of the book. My preference is character development so I found this to be ok but not overly engaging personally.

[Enid Wray]

Let’s just say I’m not the reader for this one and leave it at that?

DNF