The second in the Norton series, “ Skies of Ash,” was praised for paying “ homage to that master of complex California homicide, Raymond Chandler,” and the fourth, “City of Saviors,” drew comparisons to Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series.Įven though the Norton procedurals have not garnered anything like the attention Bosch has enjoyed, Hall continues to find new ways of bringing her personal history and perspective into the literary crime tradition. It would be more than a decade before her crime series - featuring down-to-earth, plugged-in Black LAPD detective Elouise ”Lou” Norton - clicked with a publisher. In the interim, she gave birth to her daughter, Maya, survived two cancer diagnoses, and kept writing. In a new kind of quarantine diary, a Black writer emerges from self-isolation to hit three protests in three days, one of them starring his daughter. So her parents weren’t surprised when their bookish daughter enrolled at UC Santa Cruz and announced she would major in English and American literature.īooks Jervey Tervalon jumps out of COVID quarantine for Black Lives Matter “Sometimes I felt safer with that helicopter light in my window because that meant there would be some order after so much chaos around me.” School and church were safe havens, but to really escape, she says, she “cut her teeth” on genre fiction - Stephen King, Jackie Collins, Sidney Sheldon. “I loved reading and recording every bad thing happening in Los Angeles, “ she remembers now with a rich, melodious laugh. Rachel tried to make sense of what was happening around her by keeping meticulous journals and scouring the L.A. But the neighborhood was not: robberies, shootings and domestic violence were endemic, police helicopters a nightly companion. Hall’s parents were creative, aspirational and supportive of their four children. Though working-class families like Hall’s were always the neighborhood’s foundation, raising one in what is now called Baldwin Village wasn’t easy for her mother, a preschool teacher, and her father, a warehouse supervisor. The author’s story began in the Jungle, an enclave of postwar apartments nicknamed for its lush foliage before white flight and absentee landlords led to its decline. It’s also the culmination of a long personal and professional journey for L.A. It’s a lot - though it never feels that way. neighborhoods too frequently confined to alarming headlines and helicopter journalism.

Along the way, we get a myth-busting tour of South L.A. Whip-smart and emotionally deep, “ And Now She’s Gone” is a deceptively straightforward mystery, blending a fledgling PI’s first “woman is missing” case with underlying stories about racial identity, domestic abuse and rank evil.

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City of Saviors by Rachel Howzell Hall