"Things began as they usually did: someone shot someone else." So begins a chapter of Michael Lesy's disturbing satisfying account of Chicago in the 1920's, the epicenter of murder in America. 
A city where daily newspapers fell over one another to cover the latest mayhem.  A city where professionals and amateurs alike snuffed each other out, and often for the most banal of reasons. 
We get to know Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan.  Both women shot their lovers.  Belva shot her boyfriend in the head and Beulah shot hers in the back.  Both claimed shelf-defense and beat their raps.  Their real stories are more unsettling than the fairy tales they became in the wildly successful Broadway musical Chicago.