Little Altar Boy

by John Guzlowski

Crime Fiction Lover’s Top Five Books of 2020

On a snowy Thursday night in Chicago, there is a knock on Detective Hank Purcell’s door. Sister Mary Philomena has seen something terrible at Saint Fidelis Church — a violation of all she holds sacred.

The next Monday, she is found murdered in the convent basement, next to a furnace stuffed with old papers and photographs.

And Margaret, Hank’s teenage daughter, has disappeared.

Hank and his unconventional partner Marvin Bondarowicz try to force their way through a wall of ecclesiastical silence to find the killer, while their search for Margaret takes them from swank lakeside flats to drug dens to south-side basement blues clubs…and the snow keeps falling.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery Thriller

322 pages, Paperback

Published May 14, 2020

About the author

Over a writing career that spans more than 40 years, John Guzlowski has amassed a significant body of published work in a wide range of genres: poetry, prose, literary criticism, reviews, fiction and nonfiction.

His poems and stories have appeared in such national journals as North American Review, Ontario Review, Rattle, Chattahoochee Review, Atlanta Review, Nimrod, Crab Orchard Review, Marge, Poetry East, Vocabula Review. He was the featured poet in the 2007 edition of Spoon River Poetry Review. Garrison Keillor read Guzlowski's poem "What My Father Believed" on his program The Writers Almanac.

Critical essays by Guzlowski about contemporary American, Polish, and Jewish authors can be found in such journals as Modern Fiction Studies, Polish Review, Shofar, Polish American Studies, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, and Studies in Jewish American Literature.

His previously published books include Language of Mules (DP Press), Jezyk mulów i inne wiersze (Biblioteka Śląska), Lightning and Ashes (Steel Toe Books), Third Winter of War: Buchenwald (Finishing Line Press), and Suitcase Charlie (White Stag/Ravenswood). Guzlowski's work has also been included in anthologies such as Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust (Time Being Books), Cherries with Chopin (Moonrise Press), Common Boundary: Stories of Immigration (Editions Bibliotekos), and Longman Academic Reading Series 5 Student Book (Pearson Education ESL).

Winner of the Illinois Arts Council's $7,500 Award for Poetry, Guzlowski has also been short-listed for the Bakeless Award and Eric Hoffer Award, and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and four Pushcart Prizes. He has been honored by the Georgia State Commission on the Holocaust for his work.

In reviewing Guzlowski's book Language of Mules, Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz wrote, "Exceptional...even astonished me...reveals an enormous ability for grasping reality."

Born in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II, Guzlowski came to America with his family as a Displaced Person in 1951. His parents had been Polish slave laborers in Nazi Germany during the war. Growing up in the tough immigrant neighborhoods around Humboldt Park in Chicago, he met hardware store clerks with Auschwitz tattoos on their wrists, Polish cavalry officers who still mourned for their dead horses, and women who had walked from Siberia to Iran to escape the Russians. In much of his work, Guzlowski remembers and honors the experiences and ultimate strength of these voiceless survivors.

Guzlowski received his B.A. in English Literature from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Purdue University. He is a Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Eastern Illinois University, and currently lives in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Reviews

[Curtis Urness · Rating 5 out of 5]

Little Altar Boy, by John Guzlowski, is a gritty police thriller and then so much more. The year is 1967, but this wintry Chicago narrative is a chilling predecessor to the Summer of Love. Snow falls heavily as a nun braves her way from the Humbolt Park Murdertown area to Police Detective Hank Purcell’s door. The news she brings is just as chilling as the weather. Sister Mary Philomena has observed the new priest at her church behaving suspiciously with an altar boy. She asks Hank to give the priest a “warning” not to do it again.
After Hank and his partner Marvin Bondarowicz make a not-so-pleasant visit to the accused priest, horrible events happen: a grisly murder, an incomprehensible suicide, the heinous, brutal slaying of an animal. To complicate things even more, Hank’s college-aged daughter disappears into the hippy drug scene. Hank and Marvin are no strangers to the depravity and inhumanity of the criminals they pursue, but this sequence of evil tests their mettle. They both have seen the horrors of World War II, Hank in Europe, and Marvin in the South Pacific. Those horrors seem to Hank to be the catalyst to what is happening now.
“Maybe it was the war. All those people killed in the concentration camps, for the craziest of reasons or no reason at all. Six million Jews dead, and so many others dead, too. 50 million? 60 million? All kinds of people, mostly not soldiers, just people, moms and dads and children. Maybe the war opened a door to some kind of evil, and we haven’t figured out a way to close that door again, and if we can’t close the door these crazy murders will keep happening, keep reminding us that the evil is here.”
Hank and Marvin are hardly choirboys themselves. They are tough, vicious cops, willing to mete out brutality to anyone standing to the way of what they perceive to be justice. They cope with the crimes they confront through hard-drinking and violence. Anything goes: beatings, break-ins, even judgment and execution. Yet, their viciousness is in response to the evils they face. An unorthodox center of decency grounds both men.
Chicago in 1967 is not a politically correct city. Little Altar Boy is not a politically correct book. The characters and scenes of this multi-ethnic metropolis are described in the slang of the times. Yet, even through the prejudices and the stereotypes, there is something deeper happening, intimated by Guzlowski’s poetic conceits that describe the scene when Hank and Marvin visit a juke-joint on the Southside:
The guy with the harmonica put down his harp just then, held it tight to his chest, and shouted out a lick from some blues song, some old holler, that went all the way down to Dixie and even further than that, down to the Delta, down to Parchman Farm, down to the wet, dark mud of the black Mississippi.
The snow that billows and piles up through most of the novel develops a persona of its own. Infrequently, it descends as something magical and shiny, innocence itself; more often it is city snow, grimy, covered with soot and dog crap, slick, nasty, covering a slippery surface of ice. Even when there is the short reprieve of a thaw, it melts into a murky atmospheric muddle. The snow and freezing temperatures enhance the theme of innocence corrupted by evil that flows through the storyline. This detective tale, like revenge, is best served cold.

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nun, disobeying the orders of her superiors, rushes alone to ask the help of a cop. She’s seen something that was meant to be kept secret, and now the memory haunts her. Then she is murdered. Could the child have killed her? The priest? A stranger? Who?

Hank Purcell and Marvin Bondarowicz are pretty sure they know who did it, but how can they prove a crime when both church and police authorities both close ranks? So they talk and plan, while Hank searches for his estranged teenage daughter on streets of ice and snow.

The novel is set in the 1960s, but the issues might be just the same today: Cops scarred by war, teenage rebellion seduced into a drug culture, and fragile children afraid to disobey their chosen authorities. Hank and Marvin might disobey, but will it lead to resolution?

The dialog is strong and convincing, with authentic voices and dark history behind them. The frozen streets of Chicago form a perfect backdrop for murder, alcohol, and haunting thoughts. And the closest friends might be strangers. “Nothing good” will come from knowing, fighting or changing the result, and readers, with the advantage of history, will know that little has changed. But the novel carries its readers deep into the minds and hearts of good men doing good and bad stuff, and trying for the best result. It's dark, but there's a thread of light.

Disclosure: I was given an advanced reading copy and I freely offer my honest review.

[Mieczyslaw Kasprzyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fabulous book. Gritty, down-to-earth, violent. You really do feel you're living in a violent place, "Murdertown".
John Guzlowski writes about a city he knows well, that he grew up in... though how he survived (what with predatory priests and rampaging gangs) I have no idea.
Don't be fooled by this one! It's not what you think, it's not a "straightforward" detective story (though after "Suitcase Charlie" what is straightforward?).
A nun witnesses a priest abusing an altar boy and asks her local friendly police detective, Hank, to have a quiet word... after all, we want to avoid a scandal... and then, just days later, she's found stabbed to death in a basement. Hank and Marvin start to investigate when, coincidentally, Hank's daughter disappears...
This is actually a book about the troublesome relationship between a father and his rebellious teenage daughter back when drugs and LSD were just making their way onto the streets. Hank is worried and gets even more so as details about the life his daughter has led begin to emerge. Worried, in the midst of heavy snow and bizarre death, complicated by the search of the nun's killer, Hank searches... and worries... and demonstrates his love.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good plot covering priests with little boys, nuns with priests, etc., bringing in the Catholic Church, which I like, nuns and priests I like also....liked the two detectives, but toward the end it seemed liked it was draggy...I would try another by this author.

[Stuart Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fans of the author's first mystery "Suitcase Charlie" will most definitely want to read this one, featuring the return of the two hard-boiled Chicago cops Hank Purcell and Marvin Bondarowicz. A local parish priest is suspected of pedophilia by a nun who then turns up brutally murdered in the basement of her convent. Set in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood in the mid-sixties as it gradually changes from Polish to Puerto Rican, the cops call it "Murdertown" due to gang violence. Does this have any connection to the nun's murder? Or the sudden disappearance of Purcell's daughter? Or the rising drug use of the swinging sixties? A riveting story depicting a very gritty Chicago, based on the author's childhood and later discovery that his local Catholic school and church (St. Fidelis) had more than its share of pedophile priests. Highly recommended, but not for the faint of heart.

[Stacey Krueger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I am a former student of the author.

Having read the prior book of which this was a reboot, I wasn’t sure what to expect or whether it would hold my attention the same way. Happily, I enjoyed the novel very much and followed the various plot lines with interest. Dr. Guzlowski weaved together a story that felt both modern and nostalgic at the same time. Having grown up neat where Willy was found, it was an added bonus to know the roads and landmarks Hank and Marvin saw on their way. A great read.

[S.T. Hills · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another impressive work of Crime Noir. Yet again, reading the afterword has made this novel even more important.

[John Renkiewicz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book; having gone to Catholic school through the 8th grade and being an altar boy myself should have provided an instant connection - it didn’t. The period of the novel was familiar to me having grown up in it, albeit in New England rather than Chicago which is the locale of the story.

The title of the book is in some ways a misnomer. Very little of the book is actually about the altar boy as it tries to cover too many issues in a short period of time. We encounter corruption in the Catholic Church, sexual abuse, child abuse, murder, suicide, PTSD, drug abuse, promiscuity, corruption within the police department and politics of Chicago, and the desperate actions a father will take to find a missing nineteen year old daughter. Despite all this “action” the characters and the action fall flat. The characters are more akin to cardboard cutouts than real people; there is some character development but not enough to evoke an emotion toward them.

Random thoughts of the author are sprinkled throughout. For example in a scene where the implausibility of a suicide is being discussed between the two detectives the following is interjected -

“Hank took one of Marvin’s cigarettes out of his pack and lit it, took a drag, kept it in, let it out. He liked smoking. Liked it as much as watching the Cubs on TV or barbequing pork chops on the grill in his backyard. He remembered the first time he’d smoked: he snuck one of his dad’s cigarettes, a Lucky Strike. Smoked it in the basement, just inside the door of the coal shed. He remembered worrying that his dad would find out when he got home from work, smell the cigarette smoke lingering in the basement. But he didn’t.”

The preceding paragraph has absolutely nothing to do with the scene in the novel and left me scratching my head as to why it was there.

Crime novels are one of the genres I generally enjoy; I’m sorry to write the enjoyment I derived from this book was fulfilling my determination to read it to the end.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wall Street Journal review

John Guzlowski’s powerful “Little Altar Boy” (Kasva Press, 323 pages, $14.95) centers on the fatal stabbing of a Chicago nun. Set in 1967, Mr. Guzlowski’s latest takes place a decade after events in his equally memorable “Suitcase Charlie,” which also featured Windy City detective Hank Purcell and his partner Marvin Bondarowicz.

The victim was beloved—saintly, some say. She had made a recent secret visit to Purcell’s home to alert him to the pedophiliac conduct of a parish priest. Did that confidential revelation prompt her murder? The priest in question seems to have a solid alibi, as does everyone else in the nun’s circumscribed world.

As he sorts out the nun’s killing, Hank is beyond distracted by the recent disappearance of his 19-year-old daughter, who had fallen into bad company. All this takes place right after Christmas, as snowfall covers Chicago with a sort of spiritual malaise. “He needed a miracle—maybe a few of them at once,” Hank thinks. What he gets instead is another dead body.

As Hank and his partner Marvin drive from one neighborhood to another, seeking information in rectories and blues clubs and drug dealers’ pads, Hank admits to himself: “He felt like a failure and a fool, like a man drowning in his own weakness and inadequacy.” But it’s also Hank’s habit to see a mission through to its end, however dire the consequences, cold the comfort, and irrevocable the harm to his family life and psychic health.

[M.E. Proctor · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Guzlowski writes stark and heartbreaking crime. This third entry in the Hank and Marvin series might be the darkest I have read so far. It leans into issues that hurt deeply: violence against children, flawed father/daughter relationships, religious hypocrisy ... and what happens when an honest man can't take it anymore. A great read.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good book by John Guzlowski. Doesn’t hit with quite the same punch as the first book in this series, “Suitcase Charlie.” But it does a great job of transporting us back to 1960s Chicago.

Can’t wait to read the next book in the series, “Murdertown.”