WHEN LAST SEEN ALIVE

by Gar Anthony Haywood ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1998

Elroy Covington came a long way to disappear--all the way from the Million Man March in Washington to a run-down motel in Hollywood--but his sister, Yolanda McCreary, is convinced that even though LAPD Missing Persons has given up the search, Aaron Gunner can find Covington. Aaron, already busy trying to photograph L.A. city councilman Gil Everson with one of the limping prostitutes his wife Connie is convinced he favors, is none too eager to take on the case. Even so, he hands the snoop job off to aspiring teenaged photographer Sly Cribbs in order to look for Covington himself--and before you know it, somebody's tried to kill both Sly and Aaron and (talk about coincidence) steal crucial photos from both of them. Aaron's sure the councilman's beefy bodyguard could tell him all about the attack on the kid, but he thinks something still doesn't jibe, and he's right: The tug-of-war between the Eversons is more complicated than he can see. And the search for Covington leads Aaron (It's Not a Pretty Sight, 1996, etc.) into even deeper trouble with the Defenders of the Bloodline, a black-supremacist answer to the Ku Klux Klan bent on executing all the Uncle Toms the KKK might have missed on their last trip through town, and with a five-year-old newspaper scandal that won't stay dead. Ingenious but slapdash in the details, with Aaron continuing as one of the most maddeningly intuitive detectives since Nancy Drew. Start reading for the plot, and you'll stay, as usual, for the flavorsome African-American backgrounds.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1998

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997

Categories: FICTION