I am not one for most mystery novels, especially contemporary ones. But when I was passing through the recently published book section of my branch of the Cuyahoga County Library, I spied a book titled We'll Always Have Cleveland by Les Roberts. I had no idea what it was - there is no secondary title, no hidden little italic caption spelling out "memoir" - so I just snagged it. I like reading about Cleveland and Ohio, so I thought it would be worth a look, and imagine my surprise when it was a memoir! And not your typical memoir either, but a memoir specifically about Les Roberts' life in Cleveland, and how much he loves living in the city. Well, I was sold. I really love Cleveland too, so a book all about his love for living in Cleveland was tons of fun to read.

In my reading of the book, I was introduced to Milan Jacovich, the protagonist of Roberts' long-running series of mysteries set in Cleveland. Like I said, I don't really read contemporary mysteries, so I had no clue who Jacovich is and didn't know anything about Roberts' writing style or subject matter. But I've gotta say, the memoir is excellent. It is essentially a dialogue between Roberts' fictional Cleveland (the Cleveland of his mystery series) and the actual Cleveland that he lives in. The ensuing comparison is always flattering - Roberts clearly loves Cleveland, and although his original reason for setting a mystery series in Cleveland was because most other major cities were "taken," he loves Cleveland, and every chapter is a bounty of praise to our fair city.

Nearly every chapter reveals a different aspect of Cleveland, an aspect that Roberts both loves and uses in his series. For example, Roberts loves to use the names of various friends and acquaintances; even Milan Jacovich is a real person! A dentist in Parma who has to ward off questions about the latest "murder" that he's involved in.  Roberts loves to use real names, real restaurants, and real locations in Cleveland for his stories; an entire chapter is devoted to the various restaurants that Roberts loves to visit in real life and write about in the series. As he writes in that chapter, "It's a tiny restaurant on Taylor Road called the Sun Luck Garden, owned by a master chef named Annie. Her food is so good that once, in The Cleveland Local, I sent Milan Jacovich in there to try my favorite dish, the spicy mussels.... Shortly after that novel was published, Annie blew up that cover and the paragraph about her and her specialty and put it on the front door of the Sun Luck Garden, where it remains to this day. Milan says, in part, that the spicy mussels are so good that he'd like to secretly lick all the sauce off the plate if only everyone else weren't looking."

The interweaving of Roberts' life in Cleveland with the Cleveland he creates for Jacovich is a really compelling read. It's essentially a long praise of Cleveland, of its warmth and welcome, of its various pockets of ethnicity, and definitely of its restaurants and attractions. I especially like its first and last chapters where Roberts reveals how he fell in love with Cleveland ("Since I moved to Northeast Ohio, Greater Cleveland has inspired and nurtured and fostered me - and on more than one occasion pissed me off - clearly stamping my writing style and greatly influencing the person I have become.") and what Clevelanders need to do to continue to draw people to and keep them in Cleveland ("I try to patronize the old, independent stores and entertainment venues as often as I can, because even though they are vintage and perhaps a bit tired, they recall Cleveland the way it used to be, and in some neighborhoods it still is.").

In fact, the only thing that Roberts didn't include is what he likes to read. I must be so nosy, because I just love to know what famous people are reading. I don't know why that appeals to me, but it does. But I did really enjoy everything else about Roberts' memoir. Pick up We'll Always Have Cleveland - it'll at least give you an excellent restaurant review, and at most, give you a wonderfully warm look at Cleveland.