#Review - Nobody's Angel by Jack Clark

Nobody's Angel

Jack Clark
Titan Books, 13 February 2024
Available as: HB, 224pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781803367477

I'm grateful to Titan Books for sending me an advance copy of Nobody's Angel to consider for review.

Nobody's Angel is a gritty crime novel set among nighttime cab drivers in 1990s Chicago. Eddie Miles, the focal character, crashed his family and destroyed all he loved. He ended up scrabbling for work in what is obviously a waning sector. All the talk is of the glory days of the cab trade, but the present day reality is reflected in many scenes where Eddie cruises for business amongst abandoned building and rundown malls, glad to get a trip that yields a few dollars. 

Written only a few decades ago, it's sobering how much of this book is now effectively a period piece - depicting a world with no mobiles, no Uber, one where smoking in cabs or cafés is unremarkable. And a world - consider this a content warning - where racial epiphets which would be unthinkable today are casually deployed. For example,  the n-word is used in the cab drivers' banter, as is the p-word (although I think the latter may be less taboo in the US than the UK). There are also sexist assumptions about women (we see no women cab drivers). This is where the plot kicks off. Amongst the bleak depictions of nights spent driving round the city, avoiding certain districts, avoiding passengers from certain groups, jostling for trade with the other cab drivers, Eddie ponders two series of killings - one of young women, another of fellow drivers. The drivers are seen as victims deserving of sympathy, the women as sex workers who no doubt got what was coming.

Despite that, Eddie does show some humanity (and to his own cost) when he comes across the aftermath of an assault, and this draws him into a desultory attempt to investigate both series of murders. He is, though, as he points out at the end of the book, nobody's angel and redemption seems in short supply on the hostile streets of Chicago with Eddie walking away form one opportunity (though perhaps he will still make some progress in locating his estranged daughter?)

A raw book about, often, bitter, damaged people, and one I enjoyed as giving an insight into a world very alien to me. What I enjoyed was the detail, the war stories told by the cabbies in the back room at the Golden Batter Pancake House and the scenes depicted by Clark - stories of eccentric passengers and their bizarre behaviour, stories of feuds and conflicts between the drivers, hair-raising driving and all the variety of life that a teeming, diverse city holds. These are interspersed with extracts from the Chicago Department of Community Services rulebook for cab drivers, showing just how close to the line the drivers come (and how often they cross it) in their professional lives. All of this, unfiltered, is perfect slice-of-life stuff (my favourite episode was Eddie's visit, with a customer, to a heavily shuttered dive bar in a part of town he clearly regards as a dangerous ghetto but where he and his customer find fellowship and a warm welcome).

I'm so glad I read this book, I would point out that the rather raunchy cover isn't actually representative of the content (for the most part) though it will get you some glances reading on your morning commute!

For more information about Nobody's Angel, see the publisher's website here.