Michael Lesy's Murder City asks students to read a crowded, grim, and often darkly funny portrait of 1920s Chicago, and the essays that come back reflect that complexity. Some students summarize one gruesome case after another, while others try to argue something about Prohibition, journalism, or urban violence. A grading workflow built for this book has to separate retelling from analysis, because the first is easy to write and the second is what the assignment is actually about.

The most common problem in these papers is plot-heavy writing. A student will spend four paragraphs recounting who shot whom in a particular case and then add a single closing sentence that says the Twenties were a violent time. Teachers who read thirty of these in a row start to feel that every paper blurs together, which makes it harder to reward the students who really did build an argument from the text.

A good first step is to decide before reading what a strong paper must do. For Murder City, that usually means making a claim about how violence was reported, explained, or tolerated, supporting it with specific episodes from the book, and explaining why those episodes prove the claim. Writing those three expectations at the top of your rubric gives you a fixed standard to return to when fatigue sets in around paper number twenty.

Start With a Thesis Check Before Anything Else

Reading the thesis first and scoring it separately saves a surprising amount of time. If the thesis only states that Chicago in the Twenties was dangerous, the rest of the paper will almost certainly drift into summary, and you can predict the feedback you will need to give. If the thesis makes a real claim, such as arguing that newspaper coverage turned murder into entertainment, you can read the body paragraphs with a clear question in mind: does each one advance that claim?

• Does the thesis make a debatable claim about the book rather than describe its subject?
• Are at least two distinct cases or episodes from Murder City used as evidence?
• Does each body paragraph explain why its evidence supports the claim?
• Does the paper acknowledge a complication, exception, or competing reading?
• Is the prose controlled enough that the argument is easy to follow?

Give Feedback That Points Back to the Text

Generic comments like "needs more analysis" do little for a student who does not know what analysis looks like in a history or literature paper. A more useful comment names a passage the student already cited and asks a specific question about it, for example why the newspaper's tone in that case matters to the argument. This kind of feedback takes longer to write by hand, but it teaches students how to move from event to interpretation.

Many teachers keep a bank of comments they reuse, such as a short note about summary versus analysis or a reminder to connect each quotation to the thesis. Reusable comments are efficient, but they only work when they are adjusted to the student's actual sentence. AI grading tools can help here by drafting comments tied to the rubric criteria, which the teacher then edits for accuracy and tone before returning the paper.

Watch for Sensationalism in Student Writing

A book about murder invites dramatic prose, and students sometimes imitate the lurid style of the sources instead of analyzing it. You may see opening sentences about blood-soaked streets or ruthless killers that sound exciting but say very little. It helps to tell students directly that the goal is to examine how violence was described, not to reproduce the same effect in their own writing.

Your rubric can address this under a style or tone criterion. A strong paper keeps a measured, analytical voice even when discussing disturbing events, and it treats victims and suspects as real people rather than as props for a story. Flagging this early in the unit usually reduces the number of papers that need a corrective comment later.

Build a Repeatable Grading Routine

Consistency matters more than speed when you are scoring a large stack of essays on one book. Grade the same criterion across several papers before moving to the next, and take short breaks so that the last paper in the pile receives the same attention as the first. Some teachers also shuffle the order halfway through so that no student is always read when the grader is tired.

Pairing a clear rubric with an AI-assisted first pass can cut the time spent on routine comments without removing your judgment. The tool can flag papers that lack a thesis, miss evidence, or rely heavily on summary, and you can spend your own attention on the borderline cases and the students who need the most guidance. The final grade and the final comment stay with you, which is where they belong.