The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton

Chicago in the early 1900s: Edward Middleton, twenty-three years old, a law clerk who owns exactly one suit, ducks a rainstorm into a dark little shop on Clark Street and meets Achmed Ben Daoud, a young Arabian emir running a bazaar of frankincense, attar of roses and Mocha coffee. The emir is collecting adventure tales to ransom his brother from a tower in Oman, and wants an audience to practice on. Middleton comes back week after week for seven of the emir’s stories, and carries home eight gifts in all, each of which drops him into fresh trouble somewhere in the city. Curtis runs the Arabian Nights frame straight into contemporary Chicago, keeps a mock-solemn face throughout, lets one inset tale, the doings of Dr. McDill, turn genuinely grisly, and threads a courtship in Englewood underneath.