Land of Shadows
A Detective Elouise Norton Novel
-
-
4.2 • 68 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
"A fresh voice in crime fiction. Fast, funny, heartbreaking and wise...Elouise Norton is the best new character you'll meet this year." —Lee Child, New York Times bestselling author on Rachel Howzell Hall's first book in the series, Land of Shadows
Along the ever-changing border of gentrifying Los Angeles, seventeen-year-old Monique Darson is found dead at a condominium construction site, hanging in the closet of an unfinished unit. Homicide detective Elouise "Lou" Norton's new partner, Colin Taggert, fresh from the comparatively bucolic Colorado Springs police department, assumes it's a teenage suicide. Lou isn't buying the easy explanation.
For one thing, the condo site is owned by Napoleon Crase, a self-made millionaire. . .and the man who may have murdered Lou's missing sister, Tori, thirty years ago. As Lou investigates the death of Monique Darson, she uncovers undeniable links between the two cases. But her department is skeptical.
Lou is convinced that when she solves Monique's case she will finally bring her lost sister home. But as she gets closer to the truth, she also gets closer to a violent killer. After all this time, can he be brought to justice. . .before Lou becomes his next victim?
"Gives voice to a rare figure in crime fiction: a highly complex, fully imagined black female detective." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review on Trail of Echoes
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
When detective Elouise “Lou” Norton starts to investigate a teenager's apparent suicide, she uncovers some unsettling parallels with her own sister’s disappearance decades earlier. Norton—so tenacious that the residents of the tough L.A. neighborhood known as the Jungle call her Lockjaw—is imposing and direct. But she’s also a disarming proxy for author Rachel Howzell Hall’s raunchy sense of humor and deep compassion. Land of Shadows, the first novel in a series, provokes questions about gentrification, class, and double lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A racially explosive Los Angeles provides the backdrop for this exceptional crime novel from Hall (A Quiet Storm). Elouise "Lou" Norton, an LAPD homicide detective known on the street as "Lockjaw," has solved 90% of the cases she's led. She's a smart, sassy black woman, "sweet as apple pie... laced with arsenic and rusty razor blades," bedeviled by the 25-year-old disappearance of her sister, Tori, and torn asunder emotionally by her straying husband, Greg. Lou is also saddled with a brash newbie partner, Colin Taggert, in a case involving a murdered Jane Doe that Lou suspects is tied to her sister's fate. Dead-on dialogue and atmospheric details help propel a tale full of tormenting moral issues. If the bad grow so close to the good, how do the cops weed them out? And how do we right all these wrongs? Lou, a brave lady in a brave book, does the best she can.
Customer Reviews
Perfectly Written!!
This book is amazing!! The character development is perfect as well is the synopsis! This was my first book of this genre and I absolutely loved it, I highly recommend it!!