A Dangerous Road [Paperback]

Kris Nelscott (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Minotaur Books (2000)
• ASIN: B000OT9ZMG
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's Smokey In Memphis, September 3, 2001

By 

Untouchable (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Dangerous Road (Mass Market Paperback)

This mystery introduces us to Smokey Dalton, a black private investigator living in troubled Memphis in 1968. Due to the colour of Smokey's skin and the period this is set, the racial issues dealt with are bordering on explosive. This is a remarkable work of fiction that integrates a factual event, that being the days leading up to the assassination of Martin Luther King, jr. It captures the tensions of the day with remarkable clarity and gives us an insight into how the black community of Memphis may have been affected.

The actual mystery part of the story involves a white woman, Laura Hathaway, who walks into Smokey's office one day, demanding to know why her mother would leave Smokey a bequest of $10,000 in her will. Although Smokey doesn't know her or her mother, he has always wondered about a mysterious benefactor who anonymously donated the same amount of money to him ten years ago. Laura decides to hire Smokey to find out about her family background, what secrets they were hiding and how he is involved in it. The results are shocking for the two of them.

This is a private investigator story with a difference; thanks to the time it is set and the fact that the protagonist is black. These two unique factors presents hurdles not faced by the majority of private investigators we read about these days. It's a powerful debut novel that has introduced us to a particularly likable, ethical character. Nelscott told us a great deal about the background of Smokey Dalton, making us sympathetic to his feelings and reactions, yet when I finished the book, I felt as though I wanted to learn more.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ditto, December 10, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: A Dangerous Road (Mass Market Paperback)

(...)I just want to urge you to find "A Dangerous Road" and read it. You'll be convinced that Kris Nelscott has debuted with a winner. More than "just" a detective/mystery novel, Nelscott has given us real literature about a tragic and heroic figure. If you are tired of waiting for the next, long-overdue installment in Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins series, this is the book that will distract you from your misery.

I'm lucky. I learned of Kris Nelscott and this book only recently, so when I finished I was ecstatic to learn that the second installment, "Smoke Filled Rooms" was out in hardback.

Let me give you a clue as to how much I enjoyed this book: After reading "A Dangerous Road" in paperback, I immediately ordered the hardback edition for my library and then ordered "Smoke Filled Rooms" in hardback, too. Most of you devoted readers will understand that such a gesture is high praise indeed. Now I have Smoky Dalton's continuing adventures in my bag, just waiting for the moment I open it and read that first sentence.

All I need now is a visit by Nelscott to a local book store so that I can have my already treasured copies of the product of her art autographed and given a place of honor next to Mr. Mosley's novels (in hardback).

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Read, June 28, 2000

By 

S. L. Hofsommer (St Cloud, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Dangerous Road (Hardcover)

Set in Memphis in 1968, Nelscott's novel takes place during the sanitation workers' strike culminating with Martin Luther King's assassination. Private detective Smokey Dalton, the protagonist, and King were childhood friends in Atlanta. Dalton left the city after his parents were lynched in 1939, a few days after the grand opening of the film "Gone With the Wind."

While Dalton fits the characteristics of the hard-boiled detective--a loner with a strong set of ethics--he is much more. Dalton lives in the black community but carefully keeps from participating in any way that would force him to commit to active involvement in the black movements of the time. Taking care that Jimmy, a young ten year old whose mother is a prostitute, remains in school is as far as Dalton will go.

Then Laura Hathaway, a wealthy young white woman from Chicago, enters his life. Hathaway's mother has just died and left $10,000 to Dalton. She wants to know why. When Dalton takes her case he will solve "the central mystery of [his] life, and in so doing, forfeit everything [he] holds dear."

"A Dangerous Road" is much more than the typical private-eye novel. Nelscott has created well-developed characters we care about. Smokey, sensitive and filled with anger over the unexplained lynching of is parents, finds himself caring for Laura. Laura is all of us from the North who have never experienced what life must be like for blacks living in a white-dominated society. We are also given glimpses of the private Dr.King behind the now-idealized public orator who moved the nation, black and white, into a new era or race relations.

Nelscott's story gains tension as Smokey realizes that Laura's life and his are inextricably woven together. He must deal with his growing attraction to Laura as well as the part her parents had in his own parents' deaths. The plot intricately follows the solving of the $10,000 bequest along with the still controversial events leading to King's murder.

Nelscott puts readers into a time when Americans were pushed into recognizing that life was not equal for all. Unlike so may shoot-em-up, violent novels in which the detective justifies his own killing of the "bad guys," Nelscott puts her characters into real-life situations that demand real-life reactions. By the end, we want to know more about Smokey and his life. If we are lucky, Kris Nelscott has a second Smokey Dalton novel in preparation.