Starred Review This account of two youthful offenders, father and son, at either end of the 1930s 1960s heyday of Chicago's Little Italy brilliantly merges novelistic character development and expressionistic visual presentation (Blair's such a master of crosshatching that he makes Edward Gorey look like an amateur). The siren call of gangs and, ultimately, the Mafia was too much for either Matt Rizzo or his son, Charlie, and each got in trouble before turning 21. When Charlie faces probation, his father finally comes clean about the origin of his blindness. Instead of the hunting-accident story he's told Charlie for years, Matt actually lost his vision in an armed robbery that got him locked up, where he shared a cell with Nathan Leopold, one of the "thrill killers" who murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 in "the crime of the century." Leopold recognized Matt's intelligence, coerced him to learn Braille, made him his assistant in the classes he taught in prison, and motivated him toward the straight life he attempted upon parole. That life was disrupted in ways that affected Charlie, and the unique achievement of the book is how Carlson and Blair depict the tangled webs of half-truths and lies both men had woven around themselves and the mingling pasts of father and son. A true story epic in scope and arrestingly told.