Jackson Park

Jackson Park by Charlotte Carter is a run-don’t-walk-to-read novel if you love the following…

Riveting mysteries with twist endings…

Compelling first-person narratives by likeable characters–-in this case, Cassandra, a 20-year-old college student…

South side of Chicago settings…

Gutsy female protagonists who are unafraid to follow the case wherever it leads–meet Ivy, Cassandra’s 60-something-year-old grandaunt.

Stories set in the `60s–in this case, the weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.--if you were around, you remember that time. Even if you don't want to...

Great stuff, Charlotte Carter...

Novels by overlooked writers who deserve more credit than they’ve received–like Charlotte Carter…

Passages like this…

“As we drove away from the inn, we were all silent. Night was falling and the streets seemed to empty instantaneously. A far cry from the usual tableau of colored folks out to get what they could from the night. Because of the curfew that had been imposed, only a few taverns remained open, and in the dusk their neon signs shimmered like lonely apparitions.”

Or this...

"My granduncle Woodson Lyle had also been a collector for a colored mobster, a bootlegger, a hired hand for generations of dirty Chicago politicians, the mastermind behind the booming policy racket, the moneyman in a long-established illegal betting parlor. So it was said."

In other words, someone it might be helpful to know.

Jackson Park was published in 2003. I found my way to it by reading a review of Beauty in the Blood, Carter’s latest novel. 

I checked it out of the library--you can also buy it online.