Smokey Dalton

Private Investigator Smokey Dalton works for Memphis, Tennessee’s black community. He has almost no interaction with the white hierarchy, even though they exist only blocks away. So he’s surprised the day a white woman walks into his Beale Street office. Laura Hathaway has sought him out because he’s a beneficiary in her mother’s will, and Laura wants to know why. So does Smokey. He’s never heard of the Hathaways, but his search will take him on a journey that will change everything he’s ever known.

On the run after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Private Investigator Smokey Dalton and Jimmy, the young boy he rescued, have settled under assumed names in Chicago. But history won’t leave him alone. His job in security at the Chicago Hilton places him in the center of the protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Worse, a killer works his South Side neighborhood, killing children. Smokey can’t ignore the crimes, any more than he can ignore the tension building in the city that hot August. He has to take action, before he loses everything.

Smokey Dalton and Jimmy, the young boy he protects, have settled into a new life on Chicago’s South Side. But when Smokey gets hired to investigate the death of a black man in a local park, he realizes that the murder might not be an isolated case. The Chicago Police Department doesn’t really investigate black deaths, particularly near the South Side. Smokey thinks the case easy, until he digs deeper into the history of the area, a history that includes gangs, racism, and secrets so dark they threaten his very existence.

After attending a charity fundraiser, private investigator Smokey Dalton and his powerful girlfriend discover a critically injured woman in his neighbor’s apartment, and his neighbor missing. Smokey gets the woman to a nearby hospital which proves to be a mistake: the doctor won't treat the dying woman until she tells him what happened to her. Smokey works to save the woman and find his neighbor, but everything he does makes the situation worse. Smokey has entered a secret part of America - the arcane rules of a hospital trying to follow the law as well as save lives.

The case starts out close to home: Daniel Kirkland never arrived at Yale for the spring semester. Daniel's mother Grace, a friend of Smokey Dalton's and his son Jimmy's beloved teacher, sacrificed everything to get Daniel into one of the country’s most prestigious schools. What at first seems like a missing persons case becomes something bigger, as Smokey delves into the heart of the anti-war movement. Gradually he realizes that he has stumbled into America’s second war of the decade: the war at home.

Chicago, 1969: The trial of eight protestors from the Democratic Convention the previous year has the whole world watching - and all of Chicagoland on edge. Smokey Dalton feels the pressure: more cops on the streets, more FBI in his neighborhood. But when the landlord at one of Sturdy Investments’ South Side properties dies alone in his apartment, Smokey agrees to investigate. He finds old human bones in the basement, along with hints of more. Smokey and his girlfriend, Sturdy’s CEO Laura Hathaway, worry that Laura’s father knew who used that basement and why.

In the first week of the new decade, an emergency phone call shatters Chicago Private Detective Smokey Dalton’s hopes for a good 1970. His adopted son Jimmy and Jimmy’s best friend and cousin Keith Grimshaw need help. Smokey arrives at a South Side hotel across from the boys’ school in time to clean up a horrible mess, one the boys mostly solve on their own. But the boys’ heroic actions echo across all of Chicago. Smokey finds himself standing alone against street gangs, the mob, and the Democratic Machine. If he fights this battle and fails, he stands to lose not only Jimmy and their future together, but also his life.