Blurb:
| This horrifying retelling of the Pied Piper fairytale set in present-day Chicago is an edge of your seat, chills up the spine, thrill ride. When Detective Lauren Medina sees the calling card at a murder scene in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, she knows the Pied Piper has returned. When another teenager is brutally murdered at the same lagoon where her sister’s body was found floating years before, she is certain that the Pied Piper is not just back, he’s looking for payment he’s owed from her. Lauren’s torn between protecting the city she has sworn to keep safe, and keeping a promise she made long ago with her sister’s murderer. She may have to ruin her life by exposing her secrets and lies to stop the Pied Piper before he collects. |
And I chiefly use my charm
On creatures that do people harm,
The mole and toad and newt and viper;
And people call me the Pied Piper.
- The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning (1812-1889)
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| "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"by Augustin von Mörsperg, 1592 |
My dad was born and raised on the Southside Chicago and will tell anyone who will listen that his birthplace is the best city in the world. My wife, on the other hand, firmly believes Chicago is akin to LA in the ‘90s. When I did finally manage to lure her there with the promise of deep-dish pizza and the Museum of Science and Industry she did admit the Windy City was a pretty cool place and not at scary as she was expecting (even after we stumbled onto an illegal street race). Although the crime rate there is higher than the national average, Chicago is hardly the crime and drug filled dystopia my wife and other outsiders seem to believe it is. In fact, its violent crime rates are far lower than those of Anchorage, Wichita, and Milwaukee. The dangerous reputation may have come from Chicago’s fascinating history of crime, gangsters, and serial killers or even the many tragedies that have befallen the White City in the past. Modern-day boogiemen like the Lipstick Killer, John Wayne Gacy, the Ripper Crew, and Richard Speck all called Chicago their home. The Blue Beard-esque H. H. Holmes built his murder castle in Englewood. The city’s most notorious gangster, Al Capone, has morphed into something of a folk hero and tragedies like the Great Chicago Fire and the Haymarket affair have taken on almost a legendary status. Dark rumors surround the abandoned Edgewater Medical Center. Stories like these have shaped Chicago’s history and how it’s perceived by the rest of the country: a gothic city haunted by the past. But darkness and death aren’t all the city has to offer.
Fairy tales, at least the original versions and not the
Disney-fied ones, are often a child’s first introduction to the world of
horror. Beautiful and sinister stories full of threats of death and assault,
mutilation, hungry wolves, and dark forests have been used to frighten children
for generations. Fairy tales are beautiful roses and sharp thorns, poisonous
treats, beauty and blood. They also share many of the same elements as gothic
fiction. Sometime in the distant past, a helpless woman is placed in a dark and
dangerous setting (now a castle instead of a forest), where she is threatened
by supernatural forces until rescued by the hero. Orphans and peasant girls are
made to suffer before finally coming into riches. Animals no longer speak, but
still bring portents of doom. Nature is wild, dangerous, and unpredictable.
Both have themes of revenge, isolation, rags to riches, abuse, and women who
are under constant threat as the men in her life fight over her body. Bluebeard,
and other versions of the Aarne–Thompson type
312 tale, are the perfect example of a gothic fairy tale.
In the story a woman leaves her family to marry a mysterious stranger and goes
to live in his isolated and lonely castle. But locked away in a castle is a
dark and dangerous secret. The wife can go in any room, but one, which contains
the bodies of the stranger’s previous, murdered wives.
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| In the original version of Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, and Sleeping Beauty, the step sisters cut off parts of their feet and birds pecked out their eyes, the mermaid's tongue was cut out and every step she took on land was agony, and Sleeping Beauty was raped and impregnated with twins by a married king while she slept. |
Cynthia Pelayo draws on the city’s history to create her gothic urban fairy tale, Children of Chicago. The city stands in for the dark forest, a vaguely supernatural setting where unwary children disappear and gang members prowl the street like big bad wolves. The book follows recently orphaned Lauren Medina, a deeply troubled police detective hunting a serial killer known only as The Pied Piper-- a shadowy boogeyman who preys on children then vanishes into the night. It’s rumored he can be summoned by burning a black candle and speaking a spell in front of a mirror. Throughout the story, Lauren is unstable and brimming over with barely-contained emotion, a staple of any good Gothic tale, as she wrestles with her missing memories of her sister’s death. Lauren breaks the typical female fairy tale mold where women were relegated to witches, wise women, virginal damsels, and evil stepmothers. She’s not exactly evil, but she isn’t pure and heroic either, instead she’s but a rare example of a female Byronic hero intentionally written to be tragic, unlikeable, morally gray, and hiding a dark past, much like the heroes found in gothic horror. In fact, few of the women in the story fall into any of the aforementioned roles. Stepmothers aren’t necessarily evil, even if their angry stepdaughters perceive them as such. Damsels in distress may possess more agency than they seem to, and villainous women can also be victims. I genuinely enjoyed seeing a female character (who wasn’t intended to be liked) embrace her darkness and struggle with her morality. Just as much horror came from Lauren’s psychological trauma and instability as it did from the threat of the supernatural.
While Lauren initially came across as “the young female cop
with a dark past and something to prove” trope (aka Jodie Foster in Silence
of the Lambs), it soon became clear that unlike Clarice Starling, we’re not
necessarily supposed to root for her. And unlike every maverick detective in an
‘80s buddy-cop comedy, Lauren’s flagrant disregard for the rules in order to
get her guy aren’t justified, but instead dangerous and unjust. Though, much
like police in the real world, she’s able to get away with it. I appreciate
that Pelayo avoided turning her crime drama into “copaganda”
by making Lauren a protagonist, but not a hero. I admit I used to enjoy shows
like Brooklyn 99, Lucifer, and Law & Order SVU (yes,
I’m old) even though I recognized how incredibly problematic they were. But
ever since 2020 I’ve more or less lost my taste for any media that portrays a corrupt
system as a heroic force for good, justified
in flouting the law. It no longer feels like harmless fantasy when you
realize how many people
actually believe that cop shows reflect real life and officers only target
“bad guys” as oppose to anyone they don’t like (mostly BIPOC, the poor, and the
mentally ill). So, reading a crime story where the police weren’t heroes was a
relief. In fact, Lauren’s only redeeming quality is that she has a soft spot
for troubled teens, ever since the mysterious death of her own sister.
Brimming with references to Chicago’s history, it’s clear
that Pelayo loves her home while still recognizing its flaws. In fact, the
novel feels just as much a crime story as it does a guide to the dark and
fantastical parts of the Windy City. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing
from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and it shows in her writing.
Throughout Children of Chicago Pelayo references the original, dark
versions of famous and not-so famous fairytales, from Cinderella to the Singing
Bone, adding to her own story’s dark atmosphere balancing on the edge of
reality and fantasy. Pelayo’s novel is full of missing mothers, an unjust
society where the most vulnerable suffer, magic mirrors, plenty of gore, spells,
and a moral message. But overall, it’s a subversion of the classic fairy tale
formula where the
good are rewarded, the evil are punished, and
morality is clearly defined. In Children of Chicago the “heroes” are
neither pure-hearted nor moral, evil escapes justice while the innocent suffer,
and no one is getting a happy ending.
It’s unfortunate that the darkest parts of Chicago’s history have shaped so much of its reputation when the Windy City has so much to offer. As my wife soon discovered on her first visit, the city is full or art, beauty, and wonder. Pelayo doesn’t just show the city’s dark side, she shows its magic as well. “Fairy tales are in our blood as Chicagoans” one of the books characters explains. Walt Disney, L. Frank Baum, Ray Bradbury, and Gwnedolyn Brooks were all inspired by the city to create their own fairy tales. Colleen Moore created her famous Fairy Castle and donated it to The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Children gathered pennies to create the Rock-a-Bye Lady from Eugene Field’s poem. The haunting beauty of the SheddAquarium feels like you’ve stepped into another world. The city even has a secret Little Mermaid inspired bar! It’s this beauty, contrasted with the allure of danger, that makes Chicago as wonderous as any fairytale.
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| Photos of Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle from the Museum of Science and Industry. Pictured here are the library (top), exterior (left) and great hall (right). |
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