Stone Cribs

It's Christmastime, 1969, in Chicago. After a night out, Smokey Dalton, Kris Nelscott's enigmatic African-American P.I., and his girlfriend find a young woman bleeding to death in his neighbor's apartment. Upon arriving with her at the hospital, they discover that her injuries are due to a botched illegal abortion. This act of charity blooms into a more complicated situation when Smokey learns that the woman became pregnant after being raped. The woman survives, but the fallout is deadly: Her ex-husband vows revenge at any cost. And in a city torn apart by racial strife, gang wars, and a burgeoning drug problem, Smokey believes that cost could be too high. Kris Nelscott, one of the most nuanced, intelligent writers of crime fiction working today, has authored another heart-stopping, complicated novel of a country ripped apart at the seams and a lone man doing all he can to put things right. From Publishers Weekly In Edgar finalist Nelscott's vivid fourth Smokey Dalton novel (after 2002's Thin Walls), the "sort of" private detective is living under the radar in Chicago with Jimmy, the young boy he is hiding from the FBI because Jimmy saw who really killed Martin Luther King. Smokey is the epitome of a good man trying to do the right thing when all the choices are bad. To protect Jimmy, he makes a deal with the devil-that is, with young gang members who kill without a second thought. Helping a rape victim Smokey barely knows, because otherwise she will bleed to death, puts him and Jimmy in such terrible danger his only way out is to set up a murder. The story is set in 1969, not so long ago, yet having an abortion made a woman a criminal; stalking her was not illegal; and raping her was easy to get away with. Smokey's voice is so authentic, his experiences so heartbreakingly real, it's astonishing to realize that the author is a white woman who was eight years old when Dr. King was assassinated. Without the slightest hint of preaching, Nelscott brilliantly illuminates the ugliness of that era-which defines Smokey's world but does not destroy him. Because of Nelscott's strong hand, it also does not overwhelm the drama of this remarkable story. Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Smokey Dalton's demons just won't go away. He's still on the run from the FBI, who aren't pleased that he and the young boy he has unofficially adopted know something they shouldn't about Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. Try as he does to keep a low profile in 1960s Chicago, still Smokey finds trouble--or trouble finds him--with an inevitability that is beginning to take its toll. "It seemed my entire life was about other people's children," he says, contemplating his latest mess, which involves a woman near death after a botched abortion and a dead baby found buried in the dirt outside a South Side apartment building. Dalton's personal crises are magnified by the turbulence of the '60s in general and by the racially charged Chicago setting in particular. Through four episodes, Nelscott has built a series that is both sensitive to the nuances of human relationships and painfully cognizant of how the uncontrollable forces of the historical moment can drive behavior. Another winner in a high-class crime series. Bill Ott Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved Version : 5.0