Inner City Blues: A Charlotte Justice Novel (Charlotte Justice Novels)
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The award-winning first book in the series featuring black LAPD homicide detective Charlotte Justice.
Meet Detective Charlotte Justice, a black woman in the very white, very male, and sometimes very racist Los Angeles Police Department. The time is 48 hours into the epochal L.A. riots and she and her fellow officers are exhausted. She saves the curfew-breaking black doctor Lance Mitchell from a potentially lethal beating from some white officers—only to discover nearby the body of one-time radical Cinque Lewis, a thug who years before had murdered her husband and young daughter. Was it a random shooting or was Mitchell responsible? And what had brought Lewis back to a city he'd long since fled?
Charlotte's quest for the truth behind Cinque's death will set her at odds with the LAPD hierarchy, plunge her into the intricacies of everything from L.A.'s gang-banging politics to its black blue-bloods, and lead her into deep emotional waters with Mitchell's partner (and her old flame), Dr. Aubrey Scott.
In Charlotte Justice, Paula L. Woods has created a tough, tart, but also vulnerable heroine sure to draw comparisons to such classic figures as Easy Rawlins and Kinsey Milhone, but a true original as well.
Winner of the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel from Mystery Readers International.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this energetic, tough-talking debut, African American cop Charlotte Justice works the streets during and immediately after the Los Angeles riots following the Rodney King verdict. The action starts when Charlotte rescues a respected black doctor from a certain beating at the hands of her racist colleagues. Troublingly, Dr. Mitchell's excuses for being on the riot-torn streets that night are scarcely plausible. The corpse of Cinque Lewis, a drug dealer, former revolutionary and, by an odd coincidence, killer of Charlotte's beloved husband and daughter, is soon found near the scene of the doctor's arrest. Then Mitchell becomes the victim of a nasty murder. The investigation into his death kicks up allegations of pedophilia; Mitchell, known for charitable work with teens, was hardly the man he seemed. Along the way, Charlotte has to deal with a white fellow officer who throws around terms like "jungle bunny," with a superior officer who pursues her romantically and even with the threat of an Internal Affairs investigation into her actions during the riots. She does, however, manage to reignite a romance with a childhood sweetheart. Woods makes some rookie mistakes: she sometimes strains to maintain a streetwise feel, using terms like "the niggerati" and "incognegro," and her plot, too, can seem forced, as in Charlotte's implausible assignment to the investigation of Lewis's murder. But Woods can also be funny: a forensics officer lifts "prints faster than the Tasmanian Devil on crack." Charlotte's central conflict--between commitments to her work and to her community--isn't entirely fresh, but it adds nuance to her adventures in this promising, if flawed, first offering.
