Chicago Tribune

Larry Beinhart’s Salvation Boulevard pulls off one of the toughest tricks in modern literature: a sharp, high-energy whodunit that will disturb you with how closely it is based on real life.

Meet Carl the detective, a “Christian working for a Jewish lawyer who’s working for an Islamic kid to find out who really killed the atheist” college professor.

Along the way he confronts a tangled thicket of troubling questions about war, religion, terrorist cells, the Rapture, the ACLU, a Mexican drug cartel, university endowment funds, enhanced interrogation techniques and whether it is a good idea to expect the worst in people so you won’t be disappointed.

Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize winning Chicago Tribune columnist