War at Home - Softcover

Nelscott, Kris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312325282 ISBN 13: 9780312325282

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2005

Synopsis

It's summertime in 1969 when African-American P.I. Smokey Dalton heads east to look for a missing college student. Daniel Kirkland never showed up for his spring semester at Yale and seems to have disappeared without a trace.
 The search for Daniel takes Smokey from the hallowed halls of the nation's wealthiest university to the poorest slums on the outskirts of New Haven. The harder he searches, the more he learns about the dark side of the antiwar movement, in which the idealistic young Daniel may have become involved. And he keeps hearing rumors about bombs. When the trail finally leads Smokey to New York City, he discovers that someone might be trying to kill Daniel. Rumors become more concrete, and Smokey knows it's only a matter of time before a bomb goes off. Because Smokey, a Korean War veteran, recognizes the pattern: he has stumbled into a war. A war at home.
 In this blistering new book, award-winner Kris Nelscott continues her hard-hitting look at the turbulence of the late sixties and early seventies, all in the guise of the modern crime novel.

About this title

Review:

Anyone who doesn't realize that crime fiction can say a great deal about society has obviously never read Kris Nelscott's Smokey Dalton novels. Beginning with A Dangerous Road, in which the unlicensed African-American detective was caught up in the assassination of civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., this series has established itself as a thoughtful forum in which the profuse ills of late-1960s America--racism, sexism, political polarization--can be scrutinized within the dramatic demands of fictional private investigations.

War at Home, the explosive fifth Dalton outing, ushers readers into the midst of the anti-Vietnam War movement. It's 1969, and Smokey agrees to help his tutor friend, Grace Kirkland, locate her elder son, Daniel. It seems that the black merit-scholarship student has gone missing from Yale University after firmly establishing himself there as a "troublemaker," and at one point beating up an affluent white classmate who'd threatened Daniel's brainy girlfriend, Rhondelle Whickam. So Smokey, needing a (possibly permanent) break from the epidemic violence of Chicago, bundles his 11-year-old adopted son, Jimmy, and street-smart, 18-year-old orphan Malcolm Reyner (introduced in Smoke-Filled Rooms) into an old panel van and wheels off toward New Haven, Connecticut, naïvely hoping to return Daniel to class. Instead, the trio encounter bigoted cops, disillusioned would-be rebels, and ominous evidence of a bomb-making scheme. And as Daniel's trail leads onward to New York City, Smokey finds himself confronting a vengeful sniper and his own mortality, as well as the awful realization that Daniel Kirkland may not be as innocent as his mother believes, but rather a passionate young man who's "scary because he's so smart."

Smokey's road trip reminds him that prejudice and poverty are just as ugly, wherever he goes. But War at Home's change of backdrop also means that we see little of this PI's increasingly interesting white girlfriend, Laura Hathaway. The compensations here are an introduction to Gwen Cole, a long-ago lover uneasy with having to revise her definition of Smokey, who had treated her badly; and the maturing Malcolm, whose pending induction into the military compels our Korean War vet hero to address his personal misgivings about Vietnam. Deftly juggling the requirements of a detective yarn with nuanced portrayals of the Nixon-era black experience, Nelscott (a pseudonym of science fiction author Kristine Kathryn Rusch) is producing a powerful, emotionally rich series that reminds us of just how much America hasn't evolved in four decades. --J. Kingston Pierce

From the Back Cover:

Praise for Kris Nelscott "An engrossing crime story as well as an important social document." --Chicago Tribune on War at Home
 
"This swift-moving book brings the receding past into sharp focus."--The Wall Street Journal on War at Home
 
"Nelscott has her own, very distinct voice, and her series creates its own deeply satisfying pleasures and cogent points.... Nelscott excels at setting a scene." --The Seattle Times on War at Home
 
"A ruthlessly unsentimental look at the '60s that shows just how ugly and destructive racial assumptions were. Nelscott bears witness to black persecution the way Elie Wiesel bears witness to the Holocaust."--Kirkus Reviews on War at Home
 
"Gripping...Crisp writing and sharp details keep the story moving." --Publishers Weekly on War at Home
 
"Kris Nelscott can lay claim to the strongest series of detective novels now being written by an American author."--Charles Taylor, salon.com on Stone Cribs
 
"Nelscott's hard-boiled style gives an added blast of energy to the captivating story...her characters are so nuanced and naturally complex."--The Boston Globe on Stone Cribs
 
"[A] triumphant series. Gripping...Nelscott's books about Dalton have already been compared favorably to Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins series. The big difference is that Easy Rawlins has bought into the Los Angeles land-owning dream, while Smokey Dalton, a more militant avenging angel, mostly wants to stay alive and right the terrible wrongs he has seen."--Chicago Tribune on Thin Walls
 
"Nelscott brings it all back, and it's hair-raising."--The Washington Post on Smoke-Filled Rooms  

About this edition

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0312325282
• ISBN 13: 9780312325282
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352