"IT'S HISTORY WITH A PULSE...": DIRTY LITTLE WAR'S DIETRICH KALTEIS

In Dirty Little War Dietrich Kalteis dives into Roaring Twenties Chicago with Huck Waller a bare knuckles fighter who leaves New Orleans under a cloud and lands in The Windy City. Soon he befriends Doyle, part of the Northside mob. Huck runs booze across the Canadian border for Doyle and hires out as security for Checker Cab in crazy Taxi Wars. Huck's adventures take him across the decades history, even with him crossing Al Capone. The Hard word spoke to Dietrich about his book and the decade that inspired it.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: What do you think draws writers and readers to The Roaring Twenties?

DIETRICH KALTEIS: The Twenties are like a siren call, the appeal of something desirable, yet dangerous. It was a time of glitter, and a chaotic collision of excess and desperation. For writers, it’s a playground of contrasts: jazz humming through smoky speakeasies, flappers kicking up their heels and gangsters lurking in the shadows with tommy guns. It was a time when the world seemed to be spinning faster, teetering between euphoria and collapse. I think both writers and readers are drawn to that energy — the glamour and threat of violence — the raw humanity of characters chasing dreams in a decade that roared loud. It’s history with a pulse, with stories begging to be told.

S.M.: What did you want to get across about the period and Chicago?

D.K.: Chicago in the Twenties was a beast of a city — gritty, alive, and unapologetic. It was more than just a backdrop, and I wanted to paint it as a character in its own right and give it a heartbeat  — the wind howling off the lake, the clatter of the L trains, the stench of stockyards mixing with bootleg gin. People like my character Huck Waller came flocking to the city after the American Dream, and I wanted to show the seductive chaos and the way wealth and corruption danced together. Above all, I wanted to show how an ordinary guy like Huck could get caught up in the crossfire of ambition.

S.M.: How did you choose someone like Huck to take you through the story?

D.K.: He began as a rough-edged everyman on the dodge. In coming to a new town, it made him a fish out of water — not a gangster exactly, but a regular guy who gets swept into one mess after another. Along with his wry sense of humor and stubborn streak, he’s the guy who doesn’t belong in the spotlight but just can’t help stumbling into it. Yet in spite of the troubles he finds himself in, there’s something about him that will make you want to root for him — even when he gets in over his head.

S.M.: I dug his relationship with Doyle. How did you review their relationship?

D.K.: Huck and Doyle were fun characters to write. I saw them as oil and water that somehow mixed, and their banter let their mutual trust shine through the cracks of their differences. Huck’s grounded, skeptical but loyal; while Doyle’s a live-wire, reckless, charming and always one step from disaster. They form a bond — tense and frayed at times, but unbreakable — running booze across the Canadian border, dodging both the law and rival bootleggers.

S.M.: The only reference I had about the Taxi Wars was from a Cagney flick. How did you discover it and what made you want to use it for the book?

D.K.: I first read about the Taxi Wars while digging through old Chicago Tribune archives —cabbies slugging it out over turf, companies hiring goons, fares turning into bloodbaths. I did more digging and it intrigued me. It felt real, raw, and forgotten, and it screamed story potential. And it created the perfect lens for Huck’s world: just a regular joe fighting for a buck in a city gone mad — small stakes exploding into chaos.

S.M.: How did you approach the real-life character who interacted with your fictional ones?

D.K.: Characters like Big Bill Thompson, Chicago’s crooked mayor, along with the notorious Al Capone, Johnny Torrio, Dean O’Banion and Yellow Cab’s John D Hertz are all larger than life and added a lot of color to the story. In portraying them and having them interact with my fictional characters, I was mindful not to let them steal the show, sometimes keeping them on the edges of scenes. Also, the trick was not letting parts of the story turn into a history lesson.

S.M.: Did you draw from any writers from the period? I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of Hammett.

D.K.: Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Woolrich, Burnett and Whitfield owned that era and all delivered terrific crime novels with a hardboiled punch. They created such wonderful tough guys, femme fatales and morally gray underworlds. And I never tire of timeless novels like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Bride Wore Black, High Sierra and Green Ice. And of course, there were other greats who nailed the essence of their time too: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Woolf, Joyce and Faulkner to name a few — all wonderful inspirations to draw from.