In the Epilogue of his new book “Chicago Confidential,” former State rep. and Senator Roger Keats says he has “changed the names to protect the guilty.”

The book is an insider’s look at political corruption in Chicago and Illinois.

If you have read it in the newspapers since the 1970’s, a reference probably appears in his book.

Two references came up today that are included in the book.

The first was about the crooked Judge Frank Q. Wilson, the man who let mob murderer Harry Aleman off from a murder charge in 1977.  Twenty years later, when Aleman was tried for a second time for murder, former mob lawyer Robert Cooley testified he delivered a $10,000 bribe to Wilson.

The judge’s decision in 1977 was so blatantly absurd that State Rep. Roscoe Cunningham and I introduced a resolution asking the Judicial Inquiry Board to investigate Judge Wilson.

You can imagine what happened to that effort.

Wilson did kill himself in 1990.

As did then ex-Judge Allen Rosin, a crooked ex-divorce court judge who shot himself right before he was scheduled to be indicted in 1987.

Wilson and Rosin only get referenced in passing in the 459-page book by the Republican who went down to defeat in his last campaign, one for President of the Cook County Board.

He moved to Texas the next year.

And wrote a “good-bye” letter that still gets hits.

I thought the story would have more in it about Springfield, but Keats, probably accurately, focuses only on how Springfield helps people get and keep power in Chicago.

And he is ahead of the curve in his major plot line–a Mexican cartel operating in Chicago.

Lots of shootouts, death, mayhem, mutilation and kinky sex.

It it were a movie, it would be X-rated.

The bullet holes and blood on the cover are understated, if anything.

But they match the picture of bullet holes accompanying the Associated Press article this week about Mexican cartels establishing footholds in United States cities, including Chicago.

So, what happens when a Mexican cartel comes up against the major black gang in Chicago?

And what is the relationship of the cartel with the biggest Latino and black gangs, both of whom deal drugs supplied by the cartel?

How does Keats see the two local ethnic drug selling gangs relating to each other?

Do Chicago gangs really control Chicago Aldermen (or “Alderthings,” as I remember hearing now-Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky mutter while walking out of the House chambers when she and I served there)?

Do gang members serve as election judges?

Do gang members go from precinct to precinct voting under names of people who should not be on the voter rolls?

Keats surely paints a picture where one (at least if one is a Republican) wants to believe they do.

Does the Illinois House Speaker (named Burke in the book, but who has a daughter who is Attorney General) really use state funds and Federal (stimulus) money to keep Chicago politicians under his thumb.

“You can’t make this stuff up,” Keats writes again and again in the Epilogue.

The heroes are honest cops.

And attorney Terry Hake plays himself in Operation Greylord, even though Keats moves is up from 1990.

What does the cartel do to get the policemen who won’t toe the Chicago line?

You’ll have to buy the book to find out.

It’s for sale at ChicagoConfidentialTheBook.com.