Down the River Unto the Sea
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3.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the RBA Prize for Crime Writing
Joe King Oliver was one of the NYPD's finest investigators until, dispatched to arrest a well-heeled car thief, he is framed for assault, a charge that lands him in the notorious Rikers Island prison.
A decade later, King is a private detective, running his agency with the help of his teenage daughter, Aja-Denise. When he receives a card in the mail from the woman who admits she was paid by someone in the NYPD to frame him all those years ago, King realises that he has no choice but to take his own case: figuring out who on the force wanted him disposed of - and why.
At the same time, King must investigate the case of black radical journalist Leonard Compton, aka A Free Man, accused of killing two on-duty police officers who had been abusing their badges to traffic drugs and women into the city's poorest neighbourhoods.
In pursuit of justice, our hero must beat dirty cops and even dirtier bankers. All the while, two lives hang in the balance: Compton's, and King's own.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former NYPD detective Joe King Oliver, now the owner-operator of King Detective Service, investigates two cases of gross injustice in this excellent standalone from MWA Grand Master Mosley (Charcoal Joe and 13 other Easy Rawlins novels). Thirteen years earlier, Oliver was convicted on bogus assault charges, which ended his police career and his marriage. He spent nine months in jail before the charges were dropped and he was released without explanation. Oliver now learns that a crooked cop was behind the frame. Meanwhile, he is approached by Willa Portman, an intern for the lawyer representing Leonard Compton, a militant journalist who's on death row for the murder of two policemen three years earlier. Portman says the killings were self-defense. Oliver, who faces a corrupt world with unflinching honesty and ruthlessness, enlists the aid of Melquarth Frost, a hardened career criminal, to even the odds in both cases. The novel's dedication to Malcolm, Medgar, and Martin underlines the difference that one man can make in the fight for justice.
