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.

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