Little Underworld

Chinatown meets the Coen brothers in 1930s Omaha in this atmospheric noir by a native Nebraskan.

Omaha, 1930. PI Jim Beely's life wasn't a peach to begin with. And now there's a dead guy in his backseat. The last thing he needs to deal with is a cop--much less the notoriously crooked Frank Tvrdik. But where a square-dealing lawman would see homicide, Frank spots opportunity. He can make the body disappear. All Jim needs to do is double-cross a politician bent on shuttering Omaha's speakeasies, some of the few places to make an illegal, honest living in a city that's a racket.

After the double-cross goes haywire, Jim gets his bell rung in a bizarre attack. A man on his payroll turns up dead. And Jim and Frank form an unlikely alliance, digging for the reality behind patently false headlines. They comb the city's bordellos, gin joints, and gambling houses. They search for answers in the fun-house mirror of Omaha politics. All the while, the death toll mounts, outmatched only by the absurdity of it all.

As the clock runs down, Jim and Frank must make a choice that can't be unmade. One that leaves them asking what it means to be good. And how the hell you go on living when you're not. Laying bare historical myth and political corruption, Chris Harding Thornton's Little Underworld is a searing, darkly funny novel and a ferocious romp through a world not so distant from our own.


About the Author
Nebraska-born Chris Harding Thornton holds an MFA from University of Washington and a PhD from University of Nebraska. Her first novel, Pickard County Atlas (MCD/FSG), was chosen by author Tana French (In the Woods, The Searcher) as a PBS Masterpiece Best Mystery of 2021. The book was also featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and elsewhere. It was released in paperback (Picador) and appeared in German translation (Polar Verlag) in 2022. Her second novel, Little Underworld (MCD/FSG), was a USA Today bestseller upon its release in March 2024.