Sin in the Second City is salacious historical non-fiction about Chicago around 1900, starring the sisters Minna and Ada Everleigh, madams of the infamous Everleigh Club, the grandest brothel in a city of sin. The sisters ran a premium service, cultured girls at $50 a night plus drinks and tips, the almost legitimate tip of a vast enterprise of vice. Aldermen, European royalty, and millionaire heirs all came to party in a mansion with rooms decorated in mirrors, precious metals, and oriental fantasies.

But no party could last forever. Crusading reformers worked against 'White Slavery', where innocent girls were corrupted into prostitution with lies, drugs, and force. Preachers and prosecutors waged a decade long battle against corrupt political machines, and finally started putting the prostitutes in jail. The Everleighs got out just ahead of the crowd, taking their money and retiring to obscurity in New York, where they walked along Central Park, had a small literary circle, and obscured their past.

Abbott perhaps strays a bit too far into literary non-fiction here, inventing details which are probably right but also unverifiable. She does a masterful job making Chicago, and the sexual weirdness of the age, come alive.