We All Fall Down is the third in the series that features cop-turned-private-eye Michael Kelly. Like most fictional private eyes, Kelly is an incorruptible man surrounded by the totally corrupt.
In We All Fall Down, Harvey introduces us to Chicago's crooked cops, crooked feds, and crooked politicians. We meet crooks in high places and low, from Capone's successor as head of the local mob, known in Chicago as the Outfit, to a 13-year-old street kid and aspiring drug lord.
The novel opens with a Homeland Security officer blackmailing Kelly into taking a contract security job. (In this economy, who needs to be blackmailed into taking a job?) The Homeland Security man killed an FBI agent in the previous novel in this series, but he holds evidence that would frame Kelly as the killer.
This time out, someone has dropped a light bulb in the subway that may have released a chemical agent. Kelly's job is to escort the scientists investigating the incident for possible dispersal of weaponized anthrax. Kelly goes underground with the scientists and stands guard as they take air and soil samples.
The future, one of the scientists tells Kelly after they surface, is "black biology."
Black biology, explains Dr. Ellen Brazile, "refers to, among other things, rogue labs that use recombinant DNA technology to enhance existing pathogens or create new ones. It might mean modifying an existing strain of anthrax or grafting a filovirus such as ebola onto a common flu virus. It might be entirely synthetic."
With three or four scientists and about $15 million, Brazile tells Kelly, one can create a "Superbug." No known cure. No vaccine. No stopping it.
