Black Heat

Norman Kelley. Amistad Press, $23 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-06-018542-8

Fans of Norman Kelley's The Big Mango (starred review, Forecasts, Sept. 25, 2000) will welcome this reprint of Black Heat: A Nina Halligan Mystery (1997) about the search for the missing daughter of a slain Civil Rights leader. Through the voice of his ""bad girl"" PI heroine, Kelley delivers scathing if dead-on commentary on matters of race in modern America that will both anger and amuse. This is serious social criticism disguised as sensational crime fiction.

Featured Fiction Reviews

Erin Somers

Somers (Stay Up with Hugo Best) offers a wry and ingenious tale of marital infidelity. Cora and Eliot live in the Hudson Valley with their two small children. Having moved there Continue reading »

Megha Majumdar

Majumdar (A Burning) spins a luminous story of a family facing climate catastrophe and food scarcity in near-future Kolkata. It revolves around a mother known only as Ma, who Continue reading »

Anna North

The discovery of a woman’s body in an English bog kicks off the piercing latest from North (Outlawed). It’s 2018 and American forensic scientist Dr. Agnes Linstrom is tasked Continue reading »

Souvankham Thammavongsa

Thammavongsa, author of the Giller-winning story collection How to Pronounce Knife, crafts a stunning portrait of a solitary woman. Ning, a “family of one” at 42, lives in a Continue reading »