Shortening Shadows

Set against the rich historical backdrop of 1935 Atlanta, Georgia, this sharp-edged crime novel digs deep into the city's sordid criminal underworld while scratching at the racially strained layer lurking below the surface of life in the Jim Crow South.

Matthew Grimes, a wide-eyed kid who lives in a strictly run boardinghouse, is a green crime-beat reporter for the Atlanta Georgian newspaper. But after the man who is reputedly behind Atlanta's illegal lottery has been gunned down in his own driveway, Matt enters a seedy world of crime and miscreants and encounters racism as never before.

The na ve reporter and a hardened Atlanta police detective named Jim Greerson end up working together, only to become sidetracked when someone begins murdering young black women with a modus operandi that's very similar to that of the "Atlanta Ripper" of two decades previous. When they discover that the black community has their own fearless investigator, Lincoln Mallard, on the case, the unlikely team gains a third member who's just as determined to battle the politics and social norms of the times in the pursuit of justice.

Shortening Shadows delivers the best of noir fiction-adding fascinating subtext to the traditional formula.