Hip-Deep In Alligators

Jimmy Flannery #3

by Robert Wright Campbell

*** EDGAR AWARD WINNING AUTHOR*** Lots of strange things get washed up in Chicago's sewers, and even tough Irishman Jimmy Flannery feels jumpy when he is sent to to inspect old tunnels. He keeps thinking about those stories of kids flushing down baby alligators that grow up into the big man-eating monsters alive down in the dark. And it doesn't calm Flannery's nerves when he stumbles onto a body. Or rather two halves of a body.

Now, reporting the corpse to the cops would have ended the incident for anybody else. But Jimmy Flannery doesn't turn his back on trouble on his turf. He tracks it down. And when he finds the dead man really had been chewed in half by a huge crocodile --- he knows his trouble has murder written all over it.

For at the bottom of this smelly situation is the stink of political corruption and big-time crime. There is something rotten in Chicago! And whether the decay is spreading from downtown in City Hall or underground in the sewers, Jimmy Flannery uses all his street smarts and exploits all his power connections --- to say nothing of risking his life --- to find out the who, what, and why of so fishy a murder.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

207 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 21, 1987

About the author

A screenwriter who turned to writing novels. Many of his earlier books were published as by R. Wright Campbell but later works were credited to Robert W. Campbell or simply Robert Campbell. He also published one book as F.G. Clinton. For more, see his obituary in the Los Angeles Times.

Reviews

[Canavan · Rating 3 out of 5]

✭✭✭

[Basil · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plot was interesting and the dialogue is quite funny, but the late 80s ironic racism is difficult to push through. Not just things like the villains and the side characters dropping the N-word but even the protagonist who chides them for such overt slurs is also constantly making racial remarks. I think it's supposed to add "gritty realism" but for me it was moreso just uncomfortable and distracting.

[Hans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jimmy is back in the sewers. Can he teach an old urban legend a new trick? Can he teach a sewer crocodile how to turn over? Good continuation of a quirky, humorous, and edgy series. The sewers (and the attitudes) kind of stink, but we have sewer saint Jimmy Flannery to guide us through to a better day.

[Dylan Horsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really fun read.

Murder mystery and alligators in the sewers of Chicago. And everyone has a thick Chicago accent. Hell yeah dude.

[Isaac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good but kinda racist tbh

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the third book in the Jimmy Flannery series, a light-hearted series that features a Chicago precinct worker as the unlikeliest of detectives. It is a city where the old world of favor-for-favor is fading out and the old guard is retiring. Flannery is a redheaded Irishman who simply wants to do favors for his community and doesn’t really have an interest in power politics. But, he has a knack for getting involved with dead bodies and situations and cover-ups and he, like any junkyard dog, doesn’t let go once he gets his teeth into something.

In this book, he encounters every sewer worker’s nightmare, a body severed in half by a giant crocodile, but when he tries to find out what happened because, in the natural course of things, there should not be any crocodiles in Chicago’s sewers, he finds people trying to shut down his investigation.

What’s great about this series is the different neighborhoods that Flannery encounters and the down-home way of talking and narrating Flannery has that always make you feel as if you are sitting in a tavern having a beer with him, listening to him spout off wild yarns.

[Sherrill Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it! Sorry no one else did! Robert Campbell (Robert Wright Campbell) takes some getting used to -- his main character, Jimmy Flannery barely (if that) made it thru high school and is in Chicago in the 1980s. But after three or four pages, I adapted to the poor grammar spoken by Jimmy.

Jimmy is a funny, savvy survivor in a world of crooks. His father, Mike, is some help, and his will-be wife is a working class woman.
There is no prejudice, no extra characters (tho there are plenty of those), no misdirection, and at 206 pages it is short and sweet.