The Devil's Red Nickel - Hardcover

Greer, Robert O.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0892966521 ISBN 13: 9780892966523

Publisher: Mysterious Pr, 1997

Synopsis

When ex-disc jockey and record company executive LeRoy Polk turns up dead, his daughter hires bail bondsman and investigator C. J. Floyd to find out who killed him, a case that leads the sleuth back into a perilous world of scandal, Black exploitation, and organized crime during the 1950s

About this title

About the Author

Robert Greer is a practicing surgical pathologist, research scientist, and Professor of Pathology, Medicine, Surgery, and Dentistry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

Reviews

If he hadn't been cleaned out by a bail-jumping client and his own taste for high living, bondsman CJ Floyd never would've looked twice at Clothilde Polk's check--though he might've taken his time looking over Clothilde herself. It isn't that his new client is wrong about her father's heart attack being murder- -LeRoy Polk, a.k.a. deejay Daddy Doo-Wop, was the victim of a fatal overdose of Nicoderm patches, all right--but that the list of possible killers goes on as far as the Colorado Rockies. His old partner Roland Jefferson thinks Daddy D may have been continuing the romance with Jefferson's wife Willette; transsexual singer Juney-boy Stokes claims that Daddy D stole his songs; and Pueblo wiseguy Lawrence Hampoli, a bad man to cross, is convinced that Daddy D took off from Chicago years ago with a crateload of R&B tapes pirated from Hampoli's payola machine that would be worth a fortune now. Against a Denver background as charged as the murder plot--the black mayor's task force is battling over a monorail that would split CJ's neighborhood of Five Points in two for the convenience of white commuters, and his lady Mavis Sundee's restaurant is bombed at the height of the annual Juneteenth celebration--CJ risks death and exhaustion by running down every single lead. As in his striking, overstuffed debut, The Devil's Hatband (1996), Greer provides enough motives, subplots, and walk-ons for a Ken Burns documentary. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Doo-Wop Polk was one of the first great black disc jockeys. From Chicago radio station WPTN, he captivated black America with his unique patter and his ear for the hippest rhythm and blues. He survived payola and Mob influence, but he didn't survive an apparent heart attack that left him on a slab at Denver General Hospital with bail bondsman C. J. Floyd's business card in his pocket. Convinced that their father was murdered, Polk's adult children hire Floyd to find the killer. As Floyd delves deeper into the case, he not only finds the ghosts of Polk's business past but also a family tree with one whole branch labeled "suspects." Floyd's second appearance portends good things for the series. He's tough, resourceful, and remarkably self-aware but also surprisingly naive in his relationships with women. He's a hard-boiled hero in the mold of Spade and Archer; the only difference is that his milieu comes from the heart of the African American experience. Outstanding mystery fare. Wes Lukowsky

Edition details

• Publisher: Mysterious Pr
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0892966521
• ISBN 13: 9780892966523
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 350