Robert W. Walker has brought his skill as researcher to several series of novels, each featuring one major protagonist. The Instinct books starred Jessica Coran, predating (and maybe fueling) some of the public's fascination with forensic police work and profiling, and in the Edge books, Native American cop Lucas Stonecoat was constantly forced to tread two worlds and face the prejudices of both. Now Walker tackles a historical mystery series set in late 19th-Century Chicago, and it looks like a place we'll want to revisit.

City for Ransom takes place during the famed Exposition of 1893, over which the newly-invented Ferris wheel stands guard. However, there is a killer on the loose, a madman who nearly decapitates his victims with a garotte and then sets them aflame. While his targets are random, his reasons are not, and slowly he tightens a noose around the neck of Inspector Alastair Ransom, the legendary cop who's obsessed with the Haymarket riot bombing in which his friends were killed and he was left crippled. He's also obsessed with what he contends is an official cover-up of the anarchist's bombing, and this does not ingratiate him with the Chicago power brokers. (Anyone who knows the kind of politics for which Chicago is infamous should be nodding here.)

Ransom is himself a host of contradictions. At once respected for his embrace of modern techniques, he is also feared as a throwback thug of a cop who beats confessions out of suspects (and, in one case, goes way too far). Not James Bondian in either looks or disposition, Ransom is large and bullish, physically crippled and rendered headache-prone by his Haymarket experience, cranky, quick to judge, and even quicker to criticize. Nearly addicted to opiates he uses to control his pain, involved with a woman of shaky reputation, and weak in the face of his own vices, he nevertheless exerts a moral influence over the plot and the other characters.

Others who inhabit this fascinating if occasionally talky mystery include: the eccentric (or is it secretive?) Dr. James Phineas Tewes, practitioner of the newfangled science of phrenology, and his sister Jane, over whose secrets Ransom will obsess; the corrupt police chief, Kohler, whose ambition is to crush Ransom; the artsy nude photographer Philo Keane, who doubles as the forensic photographer; the Cook County coroner, legendary pathology crusader Dr. Christian Fenger; Griffin Drimmer, Ransom's cocky but frustrated young partner; and assorted secondary characters who make for a colorful cast, indeed. Of course there is the killer, dubbed the Phantom of the Fair because of his favorite hunting grounds. His identity is cannily withheld to provide the seed of the mystery, though his motivation is clearly revealed in tidbits, and he surely can be fingered by the careful reader despite plenty of red herrings.

Walker's research pays off handsomely, as the atmosphere of a Chicago on the verge of a new century, perched on the precipice of scientific enlightenment, shines brightly forth. Though major characters may philosophize a bit too much, Walker's fingers seem squarely on the pulse of the great city and its scandalous political climate, in which graft, corruption, cover-up, and cronyism seem a perfect allegory for today's daily news. Along with the mystery itself, the author chews on such social issues as women's suffrage and their struggle for acceptance in the medical profession, as well as the onrush of police science and modern methods such as fingerprinting, profiling, and forensic investigation, all of which were as often ridiculed as championed. And it might be noted that a strong argument is made against confessions obtained under duress, again perhaps providing commentary on both past and present controversies. That's a lot of meat for a mystery, and adds desirable depth.

Though the climax is curiously ambiguous, it's a good bet we'll be seeing more of Inspector Ransom and his city, giving Walker the opportunity to opine on other technological breakthroughs and their effect on police science, all while telling a thoroughly engrossing tale.