When Death Comes Stealing - Softcover

Valerie Wilson Wesley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747247595 ISBN 13: 9780747247593

Publisher: Headline Book Publishing, 1995

Synopsis

Tamara Hayle, former cop turned PI, is a single mom trying to make it on her own on the mean streets of Newark. When her "dog" of an ex-husband, the father of her son, shows up like a bad penny, she can't turn down his plea for help. For no apparent reason, somebody is killing his sons, one by one, and the police are less than concerned about it: Black men killing one another, nobody seems to give a damn. It's up to Tamara to find the killer - before death comes stealing her only child. Valerie Wilson Wesley has created a smart, sexy, knowing heroine unlike any readers have met before. With wry humor and a keen sense of urban life, Wesley imbues Tamara Hayle with the true grit and feminine wiles that make her an enduring character, whom readers will love discovering, and whose next appearance they will eagerly await.

About this title

About the Author

Valerie Wilson Wesley is the author of the novels Always True to You in My Fashion and Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do, winner of the 2000 Best Fiction Award of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, as well as the nationally bestselling Tamara Hayle mystery series. A contributing editor at Essence magazine, her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Ms. and the New York Times. She lives in New Jersey.

From Publishers Weekly

In her adult fiction debut, Essence magazine executive editor Wesley introduces a decisive, independent PI and single mother as heroine but sets her in a transparent, formulaic plot. Tamara Hayle, a divorced ex-cop, and her 14-year-old son, Jamal, live in Newark, N.J., not far from Jamal's father, DeWayne, who has three other sons by three different women. Ordinarily, Tamara has no sympathy for DeWayne, but when one of his sons dies of what the cops say is a drug overdose, she agrees to DeWayne's request that she investigate the young man's apartment. She finds a neat room with fresh food in the fridge and extra money carefully stashed away--not the expected residence of a cocaine addict. When another of DeWayne's sons drowns in a bathtub five days later and another is shot soon after that, Tamara becomes terrified for Jamal's safety. Wesley creates a broad, interesting cast, from gentle Jamal to a suave, violent-tempered Jamaican who tries to seduce Tamara, but too little is revealed of the PI herself. The book's strength lies in its portrayal of black family life in dangerous times--future installments of this promised series will have to fill us in on Tamara. Author tour; first serial to Essence.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Headline Book Publishing
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0747247595
• ISBN 13: 9780747247593
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 241