Ash Dark as Night (A Harry Ingram Mystery)
In August 1965, a Watts traffic stop of Black motorists triggers protests, riots, and arson, soon followed by an enraged police response. Black Vietnam vet and now-crime photographer Harry Ingram prowls the carnage with two cameras. One of his many clicks might have captured the police shooting an unarmed protestor at point-blank range. The cops notice Harry, beat him senseless, and haul him to a prison hospital, but not before he hides rolls of film. Harry’s girlfriend, Anita Claire, finds the film. Days later his widely published photo of the police shooting makes him famous but reviled by the LAPD.
After Harry’s recovery and release from the hospital, a friend of Anita’s mother hires him to find her business associate, “Mose” Tolbert. Mose disappeared during the riots. The search takes Harry to high-end burglary rings, poker parlors, bank robberies, and interlocking businesses with shady owners. Racist and corrupt from top to bottom, the LAPD bugs Harry’s home and threatens him and Anita. Dr. Martin Luther King pays a visit, and other celebrities, including Marlon Brando, appear at a fundraiser for Black rights.
The most impressive aspects of this story are the accurate historical settings. We see and feel LA’s poorer neighborhoods and inhabitants, how its people survive, interact, work and play. The novel’s depiction of political and law enforcement leaders closely follows actual history. The two main plotlines (Mose’s disappearance and LAPD corruption) unfold side by side to surprising resolutions. This second Harry Ingram novel will appeal to fans of the first and to any reader wanting to learn about the awakening Black community in Los Angeles of sixty years ago.
