Burn Patterns

"Preib's is a voice that has almost never been heard in American writing..." - Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post In this, his second book about a Chicago murder case in which an offender walked out of death row, award-winning writer and police officer Martin Preib documents his journey from doubt to certainty that the offender in this case should not have been released from prison.

Preib's earlier book, Crooked City, undermined the central so-called "wrongful conviction" case that was seminal in generating an industry in Illinois aimed at overturning convictions. Now Preib moves beyond that case to the Madison Hobley arson, meticulously unraveling, strand by strand, the convoluted tapestry of Chicago's corruption that led to a 2003 pardon of Hobley by Illinois Governor George Ryan, allowing Hobley to walk free from the 1987 arson on Chicago's South Side that left seven people dead, including his own wife and child.

Preib's ruminations run deep and wide, taking full account of the complex legal and political forces behind the Hobley exoneration. Preib's account of Hobley's crime, conviction, and exoneration leads him through painful self-discovery to startling revelations as he plumbs the depths of the city's corruption and confronts the forces that are trying to silence him.

PRAISE FOR MARTIN PREIB

"Now this indestructible writer has fused his stories into a remarkable first book--an essay that is a memoir, and also something that is very like a prayer..." - William Kennedy, author of Ironweed, on Preib's The Wagon

"The Wagon is about the real Chicago..." - John Kass, Chicago Tribune

"The depiction of what it is really like to be a cop--in all its sadly hilarious glory--is what makes this book work so well..." - Sarah Weinman, author of Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, on The Wagon