The town’s political history is truly stranger than fiction. So it makes sense that fiction writers would turn to Chicago for inspiration.

The novel Windy City opens with a singular image: the mayor of Chicago, face down in a pizza, dead. Windy City is the second novel by Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition and a Chicago hometown son.

In Simon’s book, the mayor’s death pulls back the curtains on the greasy, clunky gears of power in the city.

And it catapults a somewhat obscure alderman, Sunny Roopini of the 48th ward, into the spotlight. Chicago Public Radio’s Gabriel Spitzer sat down with Simon earlier this year.

Simon began at the beginning—with the first paragraph of the novel.