Anyone who has read either of these creators' superlative "Terminal City" series will need no prompting from me to buy this book. For other people all the recommendation you need is this - if you have the slightest interest in Batman, detective stories or film noir, then you need to buy this book.
This book is a re-imagining of the Batman stable of characters in a film noir, 1946 setting...with nary a bright costume to be seen. The "super" villains, as such, are card sharks, lawyers, mobsters, accountants and property developers...Bruce Wayne is one of the latter (he's still Batman in his spare time, but BW finally has an edge to him).
Selina Kyle, owner of the bankrupt Kit Kat Club lies dead, apparently murdered, but by whom? She was blackmailing a number of prominent (and not-so-prominent) citizens in this corrupt Gotham, and had, shall we say, "relations", with a number of others. There are nine potential suspects (although you don't really know of the existence of all nine until quite late in the book) and Bruce Wayne's alibi is that he was Batman at the time.
However, before you leap on this as a retread of "Bruce Wayne: Murderer?", the whole situation is handled much better in this book, much more in the keeping with the characters, and reads a thousand times better. Which is strange for this Elseworlds book to show the regular books how it should be done, but adds to the value of the story herein.
Dick Grayson is an ex-cop, now a private eye, down on his luck and connected to Kyle in ways he doesn't want to admit. But the whole case may just rest on him overcoming his natural urges and helping the Batman before more people are murdered...him especially!
A few pages of supplementary material round out the book, including the original plot outline and a page or two of script for comparison purposes (this was originally supposed to be 4x48page issues rather than the 120page hardback book it turned out to be), about the only problem with the package is that it is in DC's equivalent of Marvel's widescreen format. No pages really use this to best effect, and being a lot of pages and bound by a short edge, it can feel like the pages are just waiting to tear themselves out of their binding and scatter on the floor. Not to mention it'll be a pain in the arse to keep on your shelf!
Having said that, it kept me so gripped and engrossed that I devoured the whole lot in one sitting...it's an excellent book indeed.
