In Chicago After Dark, four artists take on the crime novel and deliver four very different spins on the genre. Punctuated by pages of Chicago street maps, this project from Sara Ranchouse Publishing is visually and intellectually brassy. Starting with Kevin Riordan’s fast-talking, wise-cracking “1948: An Orwellian Odyssey” with apocalyptic pop culture collage, the book takes a cinematic turn with Susan Anderson’s “Smoke and Mirrors,” told purely in black and white night photographs. Annie Morse’s text flashes backward and forward in time to tell several tales, and Karen Reimer writes hers out in a tiny bleeding hand, almost but not quite impossible to read – just impossible to put down like a good crime novel should be.