Days of Rage (Smokey Dalton Novels) [Hardcover]

Kris Nelscott (Author)

Book Description

Series: Smokey Dalton Novels | Publication Date: March 7, 2006

It's 1969 and the city of Chicago is in turmoil. The celebrity trial of the Chicago Eight---charged with inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention---has begun. Protests abound over the trial and the conflict has caught the attention of everyone from the Black Panthers to city gangs to local trade unions.

Meanwhile, African-American P.I. Smokey Dalton and his adopted son, Jimmy, are keeping a low profile. They've been on the run from their native Memphis since Jimmy witnessed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., but have slowly settled into a steady life in Chicago. Smokey continues to accept cases and to inspect property for Sturdy Investments, the real-estate company owned by Laura Hathaway, his on-again, off-again girlfriend.
 
But the delicate balance in Smokey's daily life is threatened when he makes a horrible discovery in a house he's inspecting. Does what they've found have any connection to Laura's business, and her father, who used to run it? Is it evidence of a long-ago killer, and if so, how has it remained buried for so long? Or is it something that could threaten Smokey---and Jimmy, and Laura---today? Smokey must answer all these questions before the truth about what he's found is discovered by someone willing to kill to keep it secret, while the violent chaos surrounding "the trial of the century" whirls around them.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Set in 1969 during the trial of the Chicago Eight, Edgar-finalist Nelscott's sixth Smoky Dalton novel (after 2005's War at Home) deftly interweaves the issue of race with politics, societal questions and personal relationships, like Smokey's on-again, off-again romance with Laura Hathaway, a white businesswoman. Laura asks Smokey to investigate an empty Queen Anne house that had been bought by her dishonest father's company years earlier. The house, separated into apartments, has slowly emptied over the years until there's only one resident, the manager, Mortimer Hanley. Hanley's death leads to Smokey's inspection, which in turn brings a horrific discovery: the basement is bricked up into many rooms, and each room holds dead bodies. Laura and Smokey bring in Wayne LeDoux, a persnickety criminologist, to do forensic work at the house, and Tim Minton, an expert from a local funeral home, joins him. The two men form a special bond, and like the bond between Smokey and his adopted son, make a suspenseful mystery into something much richer. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In her compelling Smokey Dalton series, Nelscott continues to probe the human drama and complex emotion beneath the headlines of the racially tense 1960s. Dalton, an African American private investigator on Chicago's South Side, lives with secret knowledge of the Martin Luther King Jr., assassination--knowledge that threatens his life and that of his foster son, Jimmy. That frame story adds frisson to the series, but this time the King thread moves to the background. We pick up the action in the fall of 1969, with the Chicago Eight trial in process. But Dalton's focus--prompted by his discovery of human skeletons in an abandoned building--is on the distant past, 1919, the year of a deadly race riot in Chicago. Jumping between the present--the novel concludes with the murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton--and the depressingly similar racial climate at the time of the 1919 riot, Nelscott builds suspense effectively while making the reader feel the historical burden of racial hatred. After five novels all set between spring 1968 and fall 1969, this series was beginning to seem almost frozen in its historical moment, but this time, Nelscott, by widening the time frame, allows us to see the events of the '60s--and their devastating effects on individual human lives--from a wider (if hardly comforting) perspective. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (March 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312325290
• ISBN-13: 978-0312325299
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,055,606 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A mystery steeped in colorful settings and rich characters, May 19, 2006

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Days of Rage (Smokey Dalton Novels) (Hardcover)

DAYS OF RAGE, Kris Nelscott's sixth Smokey Dalton mystery, provides the reader with a story full of hidden secrets and discovery. African-American PI Smokey Dalton and his adopted son Jimmy are back in Chicago again. It is 1969 and the city is humming with the buzz over the trial of the Chicago Eight, charged with inciting the riot at the '68 Democratic National Convention. Smokey and Jimmy have their own secret. Jimmy witnessed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, and Smokey has vowed to protect him. To keep Jimmy safe, Smokey is operating as a building inspector under an assumed name.

Laura Hathaway is battling the corporate world in her new role as Sturdy Investments CEO. Now that Laura has taken over for her deceased father, will the old men who worked for him try to undermine her position? Yes. Laura begins looking into Sturdy's long history of illegal business practices, and her path crosses with Smokey again when she hires him to inspect a building that she now owns. With Smokey back in Chicago, will their on-again off-again relationship be on again?

As Smokey goes through the building to look at repairs and maintenance, he comes across a suspicious wall in the basement. He investigates and finds the remains of one body, and then two more. Is this a potential crime scene? Laura hires Wayne LeDoux as a forensic criminalist to help Smokey with the discovery at the house. Smokey enlists the aid of Tim Minton from a local funeral home as well.

The men disguise themselves as painters and home repairmen who have been hired to fix up the house. Each bricked-up place in the basement uncovers more bodies. Has Laura's father been involved in more than just illegal business dealings? Murder? What is the real history of this building? Its inhabitants?

Smokey begins his investigation with the first set of skeletons. His research leads him to Chicago in 1919. He is able to identify the three bodies and discovers the men were interconnected with a city teeming with gambling dens and bordellos. It is a time of race riots, bombings, and the beginning of prohibition. Al Capone is setting up his organization. While Smokey is looking into Chicago's colorful and corrupt past, he is living with the tribulations of the current Chicago trial, the Illinois Black Panthers under Fred Hampton and the protests of the Vietnam War. How do this building and the many victims found in it connect to today's world? As Smokey uncovers more about the building and its previous owner, including a former brick and mortar layer, he realizes that the property has been a dumping ground for the police since before Laura's father owned the building. Smokey puts the last pieces of the puzzle together, hoping that he will arrive in time as the story reaches its terrifying end.

Kris Nelscott's DAYS OF RAGE is the mystery that readers always look for --- one steeped in colorful settings and rich characters. The quest for justice becomes entangled in the history and culture of Chicago, the modern city with a complicated past, as age-old secrets are unlocked. As the mystery unfolds against the backdrop of Chicago entering the Roaring Twenties, the characters present their own timeless qualities in the social and political turbulence of the 1960s.

--- Reviewed by Jennifer McCord

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars terrific late 1960s historical whodunit, April 4, 2006

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Days of Rage (Smokey Dalton Novels) (Hardcover)

In 1969 Chicago is a dived city as the Chicago Eight stand trial. Businesswoman Laura Hathaway asks her sometimes lover black Smokey Dalton to investigate what happened to a now empty Queen Anne house that her father questionably purchased years ago and sublet into apartments. After filling up with tenants, over the years, the occupants dwindled until the only resident left was its manager Mortimer Hanley, who recently died.

Not sure why Laura needs him to investigate the building, Smokey move slowly from room to room seeing nothing out of the ordinary. That is nothing until he enters the basement. It is bricked up with numerous rooms; inside of each are corpses. Laura hires criminologist Wayne LeDoux and funeral director Tim Minton to learn what happened and to take care of the bodies respectively. None of the men or their female patron realizes how deep and deadly racism cuts society, though Smokey for instance has been a victim, with skeletons taking them back to a 1919 riot.

The latest Smoky Dalton late 1960s historical whodunit is a terrific entry in what is one of the best on going mystery series. The backdrop brings to life an era of protest through the powerful cast. The story line provides some insight into Laura's background, especially the criminal activities of her late father. However, the strong thriller belongs to the investigation into the bones that Smokey uncovers as readers obtain a historiographic look from a 1968 perspective to lethal DAYS OF RAGE four dead decades earlier.

Harriet Klausner

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tough and unflinching..., July 30, 2008

By 

popculturemaven "from trash to high art, I'm ... (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Days of Rage (Smokey Dalton Novels) (Hardcover)

Kris Nelscott's Smokey Dalton novels are just about the best hard-boiled stories around. Her stories are as much social commentary as detective fiction, but the commentary wouldn't work if the stories weren't page-turners. They are tough, unflinching looks at a time that many view through rose-colored glasses. "Days of Rage" is structured differently than the other novels; the set-up takes up maybe two-thirds of the book and the denouement happens quickly. Smokey is at a dark place when the story ends; I think it might be a while before we see him again, but when we do, I'll be there.