click for homepage


The Barcelona Review

ANSWERS

Contemporary Black Authors
of Crime Fiction

 

THE ANSWERS

Black authors penning crime fiction are filling the shelves.  It is so fresh and invigorating to read about a Black Texas Ranger in redneck country (investigating the Aryan Brotherhood) or to follow L.A. detective Easy Rawlins or N.Y. P.I. Leonid McGill on a new case, not to mention the slew of Black female cops and detectives that are currently popping up on the scene.

IF YOU WANT TO HAVE A GO BEFORE LOOKING BELOW, CLICK HERE

Name the novel:

1. The protagonist is a master planner of the getaway and almost superhuman behind the wheel.  He’d rather just pursue his job as garage mechanic, but a string of bad luck throws him into cahoots with a dodgy ex-acquaintance who plans a jewelry heist.
Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby


2.   Nine-year-old boy goes missing in a vast swamp of a lake and a Texas Ranger is on the case.
Heaven, My Home  by Attica Locke


3. This Harlem Renaissance mystery features a six-foot-three drag queen who gets kidnapped.
Black Orchid Blues by Persia Walker


4.   Set in contemporary Lagos, this novel features a British hack who stumbles by chance into the murky underworld of the city. 
Easy Motion Tourist by Leye Adenle


5.   When the protagonist loses his job at an aviation defense plant in L.A. and is unable to pay the mortgage on his home, he finds himself in a bar where he is offered the job of finding a young white woman rumored to be hanging out in bars frequented mostly by African Americans, although white women are allowed inside.
Devil in a Blue Dress by  Walter Mosley


6.  When an L.A. homicide detective must tell a mother that her thirteen-year-old daughter has been murdered, the detective is surprised to find herself in the housing project where she grew up.
Trail of Echoes  by Rachel Howzell Hal


7. A man who kidnapped women, abused and tortured them, and warned that if their eyes opened just once, he would kill them, is now, years later, hunting down those who survived, and a British female detective inspector is on the case.
Tell Me Your Secret  by Dorothy Koomson 


8.  Female detective and her partner try to solve the murder of a funeral director found dead in the basement of his funeral home, an arrow sticking out of his chest that came from his own hunting bow.
What the Fly Saw  
by Frankie Y. Bailey


9.   Female cop turned PI in Chicago sets out to find who murdered the local priest who was a father figure to her.
Broken Places
 by Tracy Clark


10.  This female protagonist  meets her future boss, the head of Investigations, over a dead body one night on a road outside Las Vegas, Nevada – someone that she herself murdered.

All Things Violent by Nikki Dolson

 


© 2021 tbr

The Barcelona Review is a registered non-profit organization