Saint Valentine's Day

When the strands coalesce — and that knitting is both obvious and heartfelt — the novel motors on at blinding speed, incorporating broken families, bottomless desire for revenge, and a denouement that makes the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre seem like mere trifle.

In 1928, Al Capone bought a Palm Island mansion from brewery heir Clarence Busch, and in 1929, he threw a lavish party there the same night that hit men killed rival mobsters in the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, giving himself a copper-bottomed alibi.

Saturday afternoon, Saint Valentine’s Day, the Ruiz household was in a bustle.

Constructed of limestone trucked in from Indiana, the ornate, seven-story Cook County Criminal Courts Building, at 2650 West California Avenue, in Chicago, has seen its share of historic trials and media scrums since it first opened, weeks after the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, in 1929.

I thought it might be Saint Valentine's day.