100 Pages A Day...Stephanie's Book Reviews

In June of 1930 Al Capone and several of his men check in to the out-of-the-way Blanche Hotel in Lake City Florida and stay for almost two weeks.  There is almost no mention of the stay or what they did there for that long.  In 2011, Liz Reams, researcher of American Crime and new professor comes across this tidbit of information about her favorite bad boy for a new class syllabus she is working on.  Liz dives into the research, but can't find much information about Capone at the time.  Instead, she finds a series of crimes involving the KKK, the newspaper editor and the Sheriff that rocked Lake City during the same time as Capone's stay.  The story of one boy, Zeke, has Liz especially interested.  However, she can't seem to find any evidence of Capone's involvement; and while Liz is immersed in her studies of the past, her present also seems to be falling apart.

 

I was hooked on this story from the introduction, where boys Zeke and Jack watch a body go down a sinkhole and sets off a chain of events that will change their lives.  Capone is a historical figure that we all know.  His violent reign has always been viewed with a surrounding glamour.  Liz's character reflects this feeling as well and Liz often looks for a bad boy in her personal life as well.  Through her research, we are shown the greater impact of Capone's actions as his presence changes the lives of innocent residents of Lake City.  The historical characters served as a lens for the time period.  Meg, who worked at the Blanche, Jack and Zeke, kids who witnessed the crimes, DeWitt, the officer who uncovered the crimes and Jack and Zeke's fathers displayed the wide range of consequences for an era filled with instability, hate and uncertainty.  The writing made me feel very attached to these characters and made the transition between time periods easy as each chapter hopped between the 1930's and 2000's.  Short chapters and the suspense of Capone's involvement made this book fly by.  Overall, a fun, fast-paced historical crime novel.