cover image The Long Mile: The Shango Mysteries

The Long Mile: The Shango Mysteries

Clyde W. Ford, . . Midnight Ink, $13.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-7387-0785-3

Desperation and hope fuel Ford's angry narrative concerning a wrongly convicted black detective, but no amount of action and bloodshed can make up for an overly familiar plot. After serving two years of a sentence for a murder he didn't commit, former NYPD detective John Shannon is let loose on appeal only to find that his 14-year-old son has been kidnapped. What happens next is thoroughly predictable, including plenty of gunplay and some dubious prison philosophy courtesy of Shannon's cellmate Charles Promise. The reader waits in vain for some innovation, some new twist we haven't encountered before amid the unrelievedly downbeat depiction of the underworld and its denizens. Alas, we've walked this long mile too many times before. Ford is also the author of the well-received study The Hero with an African Face: Mythic Wisdom of Traditional Africa . Agent, Natasha Kern Literary Agency. (Oct.)