novels mystery writing dangerous

books:

2 reviews
Kris Nelscott

St. Martin's Griffin, 2005

great urban noir that looks back to 1960s social unrest
Christmas 1969 in Chicago, African-American private eye Smokey Dalton and preadolescent Jimmy, who can identify the killer of Martin Luther King Jr., continue to hide under aliases from those who want the lad dead. They pose as father and son Bill and Jimmy Grimshaw respectively. While Jimmy stays with some friends, Bill goes out with his wealthy white girlfriend Laura Hathaway. When Bill and ...

Thin Walls: A Smokey Dalton Novel

4 reviews
Kris Nelscott

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2002

fabulous tale that brings to life the turbulent sixties
By Christmas 1968, private eye Smokey Dalton and his ten year old son Jimmy continue to hide in Chicago knowing that various law enforcement agencies at all levels of government and some nasty private citizens want to find them. Jimmy eye-witnessed the killing of MLK and it is not the guy confessing from a prison cell. Unable to tell who is friend from foe because a police uniform means ...

Smoke-Filled Rooms (A Smokey Dalton Mystery)

6 reviews
Kris Nelscott

St. Martin's Press, 2002

Fine novel, great character, exciting period
Smokey Dalton has fled Memphis with Jimmy, 10-year-old witness of the Martin Luther King assassination. The man Jimmy saw kill King was not the man the police arrested and Smokey knows that Jimmy's life is in danger. Unfortunately for both, Smokey chooses Chicago as his hiding place. The 1968 Democratic National Convenction in Chicago makes that city a dangerous place for a man on the run. If ...

A Dangerous Road (Smokey Dalton Novels)

9 reviews
Kris Nelscott

St. Martin's Paperbacks, 2001

It's Smokey In Memphis
This mystery introduces us to Smokey Dalton, a black private investigator living in troubled Memphis in 1968. Due to the colour of Smokey's skin and the period this is set, the racial issues dealt with are bordering on explosive. This is a remarkable work of fiction that integrates a factual event, that being the days leading up to the assassination of Martin Luther King, jr. It captures the ...

War at Home (Smokey Dalton Novels)

3 reviews
Kris Nelscott

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2005

A great addition to this series
This fifth book in the series is one of the most complex and satisfying. We learn some things about Smokey's past that give his character more substance, as well as complement the story line. Not being black, I can't judge how Nelscott portrays a black man in the late 60s, but the settings and dialogue have a sense of realness that I appreciate as a reader. Right from the first book, I cared ...

Days of Rage (Smokey Dalton Novels)

5 reviews
Kris Nelscott

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2006

terrific late 1960s historical whodunit
In 1969 Chicago is a dived city as the Chicago Eight stand trial. Businesswoman Laura Hathaway asks her sometimes lover black Smokey Dalton to investigate what happened to a now empty Queen Anne house that her father questionably purchased years ago and sublet into apartments. After filling up with tenants, over the years, the occupants dwindled until the only resident left was its manager ...

War at Home
Kris Nelscott

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2005

Writing Long

1 review
Kris Nelscott

Amazon.com, 2005

Editing Short
This essay isn't really about writing long, and it isn't about writing as an art form. It's a snapshot memoir of the author writing the novel "War At Home," and in particular it's about the decision to cut a beloved chapter from the book. More than half the article is given over to reprinting the chapter as it was cut from the original manuscript; the remainder is a discussion of the thought ...