cover image Walking Bones

Walking Bones

Charlotte Carter. Serpent's Tail, $14 (160pp) ISBN 978-1-85242-680-4

A violent bar incident leads to a ""deep, corrosive"" affection in Charlotte Carter's evocative, syntactically inventive urban noir of sexual adventure and dysfunction. The author of the Nanette Hayes jazz mysteries turns her attention to the darker side of life and love as she investigates how a black woman could come to love the troubled white man whose face she cut after he insulted her, how jealousy and misplaced concern can lead to murder and how allocating guilt can be harder than expected in the haunting Walking Bones. (July)