Summer romance is a seductive little fantasy folks like to entertain, right up to the moment it starts whispering darker ideas. Heat changes people: loosens judgment, lets a hand linger a beat too long, turns “just this once” into a plan nobody wrote down.

Ask any crime writer.

We know better. We’ve read the case files. We’ve followed motives from the fir…

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In the so-called “good old days,” a police interrogation wasn’t a conversation. It was an ordeal. The third degree wasn’t slang; it was a system. Rooms designed to scrape a man down to the pulp of his nerves. Steam radiators set high enough to make the wallpaper sweat. Windows nailed shut. Cigarette smoke settling on your tongue like dust. A bare bulb l…

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In other words: Courtesy of a Dead Man is now available in Kindle and paperback.

That’s not all.

I’ve been working on something special for you — music for the novel.

What started with “Redding’s Theme” has now turned into an entire so…

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Nathaniel Redding has been pacing the floor waiting to meet you. He’s old school. Broad shoulders. Steady hands. The kind of detective who walks into a room and makes liars nervous. A New York City cop trying to solve a murder in a world built on secrets, ambition, and quiet betrayals.

And in the 1920s no less. When a black detective sergeant was enough …

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I went to Paris looking for the past and came back with something I hadn’t expected to find — myself. First, let me tell you who sent me there to begin with: my David. That’s David McKay. A New York attorney, he first appeared in Lyrics of a Blackbird. Now, he’s back in Midnight in Mo…

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By the time this newsletter lands in your inbox, I’ll be in Paris.

Not for a vacation exactly—though I intend to eat well and stay out too late at least once. I’m going to walk the streets of Montmartre, gathering color for my latest manuscript — Midnight in Montmartre, a 1920s Paris noir that I’ve been writing, revising, and loving longer than I care to…

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Ever wished you could join your favorite sleuth in solving a case? Ever wanted the story to pause just long enough to study the evidence, make a few notes, and decide for yourself?

Two years ago, Lanie Price brought seven cold cases to her readers — and asked for help. She laid out the crime scenes, the evidence, the suspects, the witnesses. She put the …

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Today is Friday the 13th, supposedly the unluckiest day of the year. Tomorrow is the 14th, Valentine’s Day. What does it say that the unluckiest day of the year hands off to the most foolish—or the most optimistic?

To me, it says hope refuses to die. As it should.

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Now, my mother—bless her contrary, stubborn heart—always insisted the 13th was actually the …

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My mother grew up as a sharecropper’s daughter in Virginia. Born in 1917. Grew up during the Depression. Knew hunger. Knew pain. She left home when she was fifteen years old, boarded a Greyhound bus for New York City.

She never went back.

She worked as a maid for rich white folk out on Long Island. Grew older, more tired, met my father, had me. Pretty soon, she found good reason to send him packing. So it ended up being just her and me.

Precocious, I read every book I could lay my hands on. The stories were great, but they weren’t enough. They weren’t mine.

Share this memory with me.

The Record Shows: A Crossword Puzzle

Some of the biggest changes in the United States happened in courtrooms where the judges were hostile, the rules were bent, and certain people weren’t expected to speak at all.

When Constance Baker Motley stood to address the court, opposing counsel wouldn’t acknowledge her, wouldn’t even look at her. Nevertheless, she persisted. And she won. Time after time, battle after battle, she won.

This puzzle looks at her work — as an inspiration, as a lawyer who knew exactly what she was doing, made the record airtight, and forced the law to listen.

Puzzle it out ...

DEAR SISTER DEAD: A 1920s Harlem Renaissance Mystery

Dark secrets. An even darker death.

Vera Kincaid had everything to live for. The wife of a wealthy preacher man, she was smart, beautiful, and popular. But lovely wives often have dark secrets. Vera was no exception.

Society reporter Lanie Price investigates the death of a woman she held dear and finds out that, for Vera, forbidden love had deadly consequences.

Set against the backdrop of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, Dead Sister Dead is a gripping noir thriller that explores the tangled complexities of love, betrayal, and the high cost of living a double life.

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Curious about the other case files? Sneak a peek.

Folks often ask why I like to write about vintage crime. Fair.

Some people talk with their hands. Some with their eyes. The ones you want to watch are the ones who don’t. The ones who keep too still, who don’t blink when everyone else does, who sit in a room like they’re afraid any motion might spill the story they’re trying to hold together.

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We spend a l…

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Folks often ask why I like to write about vintage crime. Fair question. Truth is, sometimes I ask myself the same thing. Thinking back—and I’m probably aging myself by saying this—I grew up watching those old black-and-white detective movies on TV. You know, film noir. The ones with frosted-glass doors, ceiling fans that never worked, and heroes who drank too much and cared too hard. Hmm-hmph. I sure loved those stories.

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Don’t get me wrong. I don’t just respect modern forensics; I admire it. Am grateful for it. But when it comes to a good crime story—all those shiny gadgets, the lab coats, the certainty—they never hit as hard as plain old, common-sense detective work. The kind that runs on intuition, coffee, and a good pair of shoes.

Let's finish this over a drink.

Shards of Betrayal: A Lanie Price Novel

Betrayal lurks behind the shadows of the silver screen.

Society reporter Lanie Price has been looking forward to interviewing celebrity Seth Carter. He’s a maverick director in the world of race films and now he’s vowing to depict hard truths on the silver screen.

Then a spotlight crashes down on set, nearly killing his wife, and Lanie realizes she just witnessed a warning. There have been other “accidents” and angry threats.

Someone means to kill this film—even if it means killing the people making it.

Step onto a movie set where dreams are made—and lives are shattered.

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This morning I woke up smack dab in the middle of an anxiety attack. It started before I even opened my eyes. I could already hear him, Ole Mr. Nasty running his mouth, listing every errand I hadn’t run, appointment I hadn’t made, dream I hadn’t realized before 2024 was done.

You know him. Mr. Ole Nasty. The voice that’s never satisfied. The one that gre…

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The days before New Year’s Eve carry a special kind of honesty. Folks start reviewing their year like it’s evidence in a case they barely won. The victories look smaller, the regrets look bolder, and the hopes… well, those get loud again. Everybody wants one last chance to be better, or braver, or less foolish than they were in July.

Folks walk around wi…

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Every December, folks start acting like the world agreed on one shared mood. joy, sparkle, harmony. as if everybody got the memo and signed it in blood. but we know better. Some of us walk into the holidays with a smile that feels borrowed. Some of us have a knot in the gut the size of last year’s fruitcake. Families gather, old stories wake up, and sud…

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Meet Catherine Tucker, author of Tall Cotton—a blistering tale of race, justice, and survival in 1970 Mississippi. A boy fighting for his mother. A lawyer facing his own demons. A town steeped in secrets.

For readers of To Kill a Mockingbird…

Catherine talks about how Harper Lee’s classic helped shape Baile…

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Christmas looks gentle from a distance. Pretty lights. Slow songs. Windows glowing like promises nobody intends to keep. But get close enough and you’ll feel it — that low hum in the air, the one that makes folks soft in the middle and reckless around the edges. Crime writers know that holidays crack people open. And once a crack appears, anything can s…

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Twenty-five years ago, I published a book called Harlem Redux, about a 1920s New York civil rights attorney who returns from the dead to investigate his sister’s supposed suicide—and finds a viper’s den of family secrets, betrayal, and long-buried lies. The story follows his search for truth through the wreckage of love and loyalty.

Harlem Redux didn’t a…

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Every year around this time, some poor bird somewhere makes the news for escaping its fate. Usually it’s a farm upstate, sometimes a backyard coop in Queens. There’s always a photo — the turkey darting across a road, feathers flying, looking both ridiculous and determined. And for a moment, we all root for it. The great escapee.

Can’t say I blame him. So…

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Still in Los Angeles. Still nursing this miserable cold. (It’s the cough that’s threatening to do me in. If I could get rid of that, I’d be golden.) Loving being near the li’l fella. (My, my, my! My new grandbaby is getting plumper by the day!)

Anyway, being sick has a way of making the proud humble. So, I thought I’d own up to something. A little secret…

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Thirty-five years ago, in November 1989, I stood among the crowds at Potsdamer Platz in the dark pre…

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