About this ebook
Smokey can’t ignore the crimes, any more than he can ignore the tension building in the city that hot August. He must take action, before he loses everything.
Chosen as one of the top ten mystery novels of the year by both Deadly Pleasures and Booklist, Smoke-Filled Roomsfulfills the promise of the award-winning Dangerous Road, and makes Smokey Dalton into one of the mystery field’s most memorable detectives.
“Nelscott does a superb job of using a familiar historical moment to dramatize an intimate human drama, as Smokey and Jimmy struggle to avoid becoming anonymous casualties lost behind the headlines. This series has all the passion and precision of Walter Mosley’s early Easy Rawlins novels, but it is not derivative. In fact, Smokey just may be a more compelling character than the celebrated Easy.”
—Booklist starred review
“Nelscott’s series setting, in the turbulent late ’60s, gives her books layers of issues of racism, class, and war, all of which still seem to remain sadly timely today.”
— Oregonian
“Nelscott has her own, very distinct voice, and her series creates its own deeply satisfying pleasures and cogent points.”
—Seattle Times
“Nelscott is good at conveying the edgy caution that blacks once brought to their movements among white society.”
—Houston Chronicle
“(A) crime writer deliberately taking chances.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Like Walter Mosley and George Pelecanos, Nelscott is a chronicler of America’s great racial divide, one concerned not just with solving the crime on the surface of the story but also (more so) with developing the historical backbone that gives the story its power and resonance.”
—Mark Weingardner
National Book Award finalist
