Topshelf mysteries

Ebony, July, 2004

There's nothing like a good mystery for summer reading, and this summer there are two whodunits that fit the bill, with an inherent set of compelling contrasts. Both are sequels of popular series, one book is set in the East and one in the West. In one the hero is a male gumshoe, while the other is a young female.

Walter Mosley's eighth novel in the Easy Rawlins series, LITTLE SCARLET (Little, Brown and Company, $24.95), and CNBC President and CEO Pamela Thomas-Graham's ORANGE CRUSHED: AN IVY LEAGUE MYSTERY (Simon & Schuster, $24) both beguile the reader. In Mosley's book, it's the hot summer of the 1965 Watts riots. The air is still heavy with ashes when a redheaded woman named Little Scarlet is found murdered in her home. A White man was seen in the neighborhood Did he kill her? Only Easy Rawlins, Watt's unofficial private detective, can find out. Thomas-Graham returns with her popular heroine Nikki Chase in a brisk and atmospheric mystery set in Princeton and Cambridge. The heroine awakens to a campus fire that has destroyed the planned building for the campus' Black Studies department. The body of her mentor is found inside. The Princeton police say his death is an accident, but Nikki's investigation uncovers information that will rock not only the Princeton campus, but Harvard as well. The book has already been optioned for a feature film starring Morgan Freeman.