Street Justice:
A Smokey Dalton Novel

Kris Nelscott

In the first week of the new decade, an emergency phone call shatters Chicago Private Detective Smokey Dalton’s hopes for a good 1970. His adopted son Jimmy and Jimmy’s best friend and cousin Keith Grimshaw need help.

Smokey arrives at a South Side hotel across from the boys’ school in time to clean up a horrible mess, one the boys mostly solve on their own. But the boys’ heroic actions echo across all of Chicago. Smokey finds himself standing alone against street gangs, the mob, and the Democratic Machine.

If he fights this battle and fails, he stands to lose not only Jimmy and their future together, but also his life.

A finalist for the 2015 Shamus Award for Best Original Paperback P.I. Novel by the Private Eye Writers of America.

A Dangerous Road:
A Smokey Dalton Novel

Kris Nelscott

Kris Nelscott can lay claim to the strongest series of detective novels now being written by an American author.” —Salon

Winner of the Herodotus Award For Best Historical Mystery

Private Investigator Smokey Dalton works for Memphis, Tennessee’s black community. He has almost no interaction with the white hierarchy, even though they exist only blocks away. So he’s surprised the day a white woman walks into his Beale Street office.

Laura Hathaway has sought him out because he’s a beneficiary in her mother’s will, and Laura wants to know why. So does Smokey. He’s never heard of the Hathaways, but his search will take him on a journey that will change everything he’s ever known.

Set against the backdrop of the strike and protests that will end with Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, A Dangerous Road combines the politics of race, betrayal, unexpected love, and the terrible cost of trust into a story so memorable the Mystery Writers of America chose it as one of the top five novels of the year.

Smoke-Filled Rooms:
A Smokey Dalton Novel

Kris Nelscott

On the run after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Private Investigator Smokey Dalton and Jimmy, the young boy he rescued, have settled under assumed names in Chicago. But history won’t leave him alone. His job in security at the Chicago Hilton places him in the center of the protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Worse, a killer works his South Side neighborhood, killing children. The Chicago Police Department doesn’t solve crimes in the South Side. Smokey can’t ignore the crimes, any more than he can ignore the tension building in the city that hot August. He has to take action, before he loses everything.

Chosen as one of the top ten mystery novels of the year by both Deadly Pleasures and Booklist, Smoke-Filled Rooms fulfills the promise of the award-winning Dangerous Road, and makes Smokey Dalton into one of the mystery field’s most memorable detectives.

Thin Walls: A Smokey Dalton Novel

Kris Nelscott

Smokey Dalton and Jimmy, the young boy he protects, have settled into a new life on Chicago’s South Side. But when Smokey gets hired to investigate the death of a black man in a local park, he realizes that the murder might not be an isolated case. The Chicago Police Department doesn’t really investigate black deaths, particularly near the South Side. Smokey thinks the case easy, until he digs deeper into the history of the area, a history that includes gangs, racism, and secrets so dark they threaten his very existence.

Chosen as one of the top ten mystery novels of the year by the Chicago Tribune, Thin Walls shows why Publisher’s Weekly gave it a starred review, and Booklist calls it “another fine entry in an outstanding series.”

War at Home:
A Smokey Dalton Novel

Kris Nelscott

The case starts out close to home: Daniel Kirkland never arrived at Yale for the spring semester. Daniel’s mother Grace, a friend of Smokey Dalton’s and his son Jimmy’s beloved teacher, sacrificed everything to get Daniel into one of the country’s most prestigious schools.

What at first seems like a missing persons case becomes something bigger, as Smokey delves into the heart of the anti-war movement. He goes from the storied halls of Yale University to the slums outside New Haven to Harlem as he searches for Daniel. All the while Smokey hears rumors he doesn’t like, from violent attacks to talk of bombs.

Gradually he realizes that he has stumbled into America’s second war of the decade: the war at home.