Chapter 5: Tower Town and Magic City
About the series ...
TRUE NOIR: The Assassination of Anton Cermak is a fully-immersive audio series adapted from the mystery novel TRUE DETECTIVE by Max Allan Collins.
The drama is set in Chicago at the end of the Prohibition Era (in the early 1930s) and tells the story of private eye Nathan Heller as he tracks down a political assassin. Mayor Anton Cermak was in a nearly constant power struggle with organized crime, business tycoons, and corrupt politicians … leaving plenty of suspects.
New episodes appear every Friday through February 28, 2025.
A little more about this episode …
Max Allan Collins talks about Prohibition-era Chicago’s darker (and sexier) side. He gives us more information about “Tower Town” and the artists, radicals, and hobos who lived there.
Max also provides a mini-lecture on the history of the “hard-boiled detective” and how the rules established for that kind of American hero in the 20s, 30s, and 40s had to be broken by the time he was writing about Nate Heller in the 1970s and 80s.
Take a closer look at this chapter with Max’s exclusive History Behind The Mystery series of videos.
Check out more episodes of this series ...
Chapter 10: The Happy Ending
Heller survives being pushed off the Sky Ride at the Chicago World’s Fair, triumphs in a brutal battle of blows and bullets, and even invades the domain of a Chicago mob boss without getting killed. But will he make it through breaking the bad news to Mary Anne about her missing brother?
Chapter 9: The Guilty Party
Heller takes an unexpected thrill ride at the World’s Fair, ending on a metal strut hundreds of feet off the ground. It’s just the first of a series of events that night that could spell the end of his fledgling detective agency – and him.
Chapter 8: Too Long At The Fair
Heller watches a capacity crowd celebrate the opening of the Chicago World’s Fair. Little does he know he’s standing at the crossroads of his two biggest cases – and things are about to take an unexpected turn.
Chapter 7: Trial Run
Just three days after Chicago Mayor Cermak dies from an assassin’s bullet, the Bayfront Park Shooter is tried for attempted murder on four counts and sentenced to eighty years. But Heller knows there’s more to the story than a lunatic with a gun.