"Things began as they usually did: Someone shot someone else." So begins a chapter of Michael Lesy's disturbingly satisfying account of Chicago in the 1920s, the epicenter of murder in America. A city where daily newspapers fell over one another to cover the latest mayhem. A city where professionals and amatures alike snuffed each other out, and often for the most banal of reasons. Men killing men, men killing women, women killing men -- crimes of loot and love.