Inner City Blues »

A lifelong lover of books, first-time novelist Paula L. Woods is also the editor of the critically-acclaimed anthology Spooks, Spies, and Private Eyes: Black Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Fiction of the 20th Century, which was nominated for Anthony and Macavity Awards and received an award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

With Felix H. Liddell, Paula Woods is the author/editor of the best-selling I, Too, Sing America: The African American Book of Days; Merry Christmas, Baby: A Christmas and Kwanzaa Treasury; and I Hear a Symphony: African Americans Celebrate Love, the last of which won Fiction Honors from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for multicultural literature. Woods and Liddell are also the co-founders of Livre Noir, a book packaging and marketing firm.

Ms. Woods's writing has appeared in Essence, Emerge, and Mary Higgins Clark Mystery magazines as well as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Dallas Morning News, among other newspapers. She hosts a monthly radio segment, "The Book Doctor," which airs in Los Angeles on KPCC 89.3 FM's program "Ebony," and has served on the Author Committee of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books since its inception.

A native of Los Angeles, she lives with her husband, over a thousand books, and an eleven year-old boxer, Sampson, who serves as a model for Detective Justice's dog, Beast.

This debut novel in a new series featuring black LAPD homicide detective Charlotte Justice will make mystery fans wanna holler — with delight.

Kirkus Reviews

When the City of Angels goes haywire following the beating of Reginald Denny, the last person you want to be is a black detective in the LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division. Charlotte Justice, who's hearing her share of ethnic slurs from the back of the police bus trolling for rioters, gets beaten by her own colleagues when she tries to keep them off Lance Mitchell, an emergency-room doctor they find on King Boulevard past curfew. But Mitchell, a womanizer whose syndicated Love Doctor wife is doing everything she can to keep their messy divorce quiet, may not be worth Charlotte's trouble, especially when his missing wallet is found under the corpse of Robert ("Cinque") Lewis, the one-armed revolutionary who vanished after murdering Charlotte's husband and baby daughter over ten years ago. Charlotte, who still can't bring herself to clean out her late family's things, is glad that her battles on Mitchell's behalf bring her together with Mitchell's boss Dr. Aubrey Scott, her onetime high-school flame, but she isn't ready to let Aubrey as far into her life as he wants to come. Meantime, a trail of fresh casualties leads from Cinque Lewis's Black Freedom Militia to gallery owner Reggie Peeples's program to foster inner-city black artists. What's the connection, and how do Charlotte's own department, and Charlotte herself, fit in? Anthologist Woods (Spooks, Spies, and Private Eyes, 1995) puts an African-American spin on Sara Paretsky's trademarks (the broad canvas filled with big events, the tough-as-the-boys heroine, the gimlet eye for urban corruption) in this important debut. .