Stone Cribs: A Smokey Dalton Novel

This particular volume is about children - either abandoned, unwanted, loved and protected, or warped by poverty and the people around them. It's a grim story on many levels. Jimmy continues to be the weak point of the series for me. I can't decide if it's uneven characterisation, or just that I'm not giving h While the books can be read alone, this is definitely a series that is best read from the start, as Smokey's surroundings and past actions constantly weave through his current circumstances. I can't decide if it's uneven characterisation, or just that I'm not giving him enough credit for his difficult past, but he just comes across as a sulky brat.

Stone Cribs or Smokey 4, a great story even if it contains minutiae overkill. This is the 3rd of the Smokey Dalton series. Once again it has captivated me enough that I will be downloading number 4 momentarily. It is a saga that grabs you and does not let you leave without knowing what comes next. I did have some trouble getting through overly descriptive uninteresting information of mundane actions of the main characters. It added little to the story other than to prolong it.

Nelscott does a mar Stone Cribs or Smokey 4, a great story even if it contains minutiae overkill. Nelscott does a marvelous job drawing me and I am sure all her readers into her stories. She does it with a rare ability to make you interested in and care about her main cast of characters. Do not hesitate to start with "A Dangerous Road" the first of this series, you will not regret it. Although Nelscott has won awards for her previous Smokey Dalton novels, I'm not convinced this is up to caliber.

The story deals with Chicago, and the extreme racial tension between the black and white communities. Smokey is caught in the middle, since he dates a white wealthy entrepreneur.

In this story, the main theme is adoption of black babies and illegal abortions. Smokey and his lady Laura arrive at his place after a banquet to find a woman hemorrhaging in a neighboring apartment.

They Although Nelscott has won awards for her previous Smokey Dalton novels, I'm not convinced this is up to caliber. They get her to the hospital and learn the problems are caused by a botched abortion. Several people want Smokey to help find the quack doctor who did this. He barely begins his investigation halfway through the book when he finds the corpse of a baby buried in a flower box at a deserted apartment building.

I must say, I didn't get much further than this. Laura took it, and then used it to slip her arm around my back. Five paragraphs at the beginning of this chapter are merely setting a scene--a scene the reader has been in for the past 15 pages. When dialogue that would get out information does begin, it's repetitive and stilted.

She took it," shows up at least four other times in what I read. Narrative explanations are given for what has already been showed through action or conversation. There are also many one and two sentence paragraphs, which only add to the jerkiness of the narration.

Aug 27, Therese rated it really liked it Recommended to Therese by: Partners in Crime reading group. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book was selected by a mystery reading group I attend. This book is proof of what I love about reading groups. I am able to read books I would never pick up on my own. I had never even heard of Kris Nelscott, the author.

This is the fourth in a series of "Smokey Dalton" novels. This book takes place in and takes on illegal abortion, housing developments, and gangs. Smokey is a private inv This book was selected by a mystery reading group I attend. Smokey is a private investigator who becomes involved with helping Val, the friend of a friendm, Marvella, after Val has an abortion, which almost kills her. He and his girlfriend, Laura, who is white another interesting issue to deal with in this time period save her life by taking her to the hospital.

Smokey is then "hired" by Marvella to find the illegal abortionist. Val's ex-husband, Truman, a police officer, becomes involved as well. As the story unfolds, we find out Val had the abortion after being raped. I liked Smokey and Laura and other characters introduced. Smokey is also involved with a young boy, Jimmy, who, in a different book in the series, witnesses who actually killed Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Smokey somehow "rescues" Jimmy and takes him away from Memphis in order to save his life. There were frequent mentions of this in "Stone Cribs" which makes me want to read the first in the series, "A Dangerous Road" even more to find out what exactly happened with Smokey and Jimmy. Chances are good that I will likely read all six Smokey Dalton books. Good writing, good story, great characters. Smokey and Jimmy have remained in Chicago during the third and fourth books. And Smokey and Laura Hathaway have resumed their relationship more openly. Both locations are dangerous, scary places, although the Moon is somewhat less corrupt.

I believe that she is on par with Walter Mosley, and that's high praise. It helps to read the Nelscott Smokey Dalton series in order because events build from book to book. Briefly without trying to give too much away, in this book in the series, a woman nearly dies from an illegal abortion and Smokey going by the name of Bill Grishman for reasons explained in earlier books agrees to try to track down the butcher and find a way to end his atrocities. But that story quickly becomes intertwined with what's happening to kids on the South Side, where the Blackstone Rangers and the Black Panthers are competing with the Disciples for year-old kids to run drugs and train to be assassination teams.

To protect Jimmy and the children of his good friends the Grishmans, Smokey works out a deal with the Rangers, to inform them from time to time if he hears things that want to know in return for leaving the kids alone. It's a deal with the devil, and Smokey knows it.

As he continues to try to find the abortionist he calls in a Polish cop who is going through some drastic ethical questioning about his own racism and the ethics of the Chicago cops circa , and both of them attempt to help a black cop who has personal ties to the abortionist's victim. By the end of the book there's a lot of dead people, and only a few of the good guys have come out of it alive. The compromises made to get rid of some evil actors have led to an even more dangerous position for Smokey and Jimmy.

As with the other books in this series, I've bought them expecting to read a few chapters each evening, and have ended up staying up well past my bedtime because I have to read 'just one more chapter. You care about these people, you get angry for the arrogance and coldness of the white world, but you mostly just want them to survive. Very good reading, and so true to the year. Strong characters of course, you had to be strong this era. I would have given the entire Smokey Dalton series 10 stars if possible. Looking forward to more novels in the series!

This series about a private investigator during the tumultuous sixties continues to provide an excellent read. It is well researched and gives the reader a snapshot of the difficult choices many felt they had to make back then. All of Smokey Dalton books are exciting and definitely a page turner. I read one after the other. This is the 4th book in the Smokey Dalton series, a series that is set in Memphis and then Chicago in The tension produced by the need to remain undiscovered underlines the entire series and is continued in this book.

It isn't helped by the fact that, because Smokey works as an unofficial private detective, he seems to be a magnet for trouble, threatening to bring him to the notice of the police too often. The story starts off at a frantic pace after Smokey and his girlfriend Laura arrive home to find a woman lying in his neighbour's apartment bleeding to death. Upon closer inspection it becomes obvious that the woman has had an abortion, an operation that is illegal in They rush her to hospital where she is almost refused treatment because she would not name the doctor who performed the procedure.

The whole scene raises the abortion issue, as it was at the time in great detail. It particularly highlights the way in which a black woman was treated and explains how they were occasionally punished by being sterilized for having an abortion, a fact that shocked Smokey and me. It turns out that the woman is the "sort of" cousin of his neighbour and she hires Smokey to try to find out who performed the abortion in the hope that other women will be warned to stay away from that particular doctor.

It's a vague case that appears to have no real direction to it.

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Smokey merely works his way down a list of names, running into dead ends and false leads, pretty standard detective work. What is established over and over is Smokey's caring nature as he puts himself out for less fortunate families that he meets while working. The case is turned on its head halfway through the book when a murder takes place that hits very close to home for Smokey.

The directionless feel to the story suddenly coalesces into a grim and determined fight as once again Smokey finds himself up against a police force that refuses to properly investigate a crime against a black man. The tension that has dominated the first three books of the series is still a major factor in STONE CRIBS, but it has been complemented by a significantly greater emphasis on the character development.

Characters who played minor roles previously have been brought back here and we learn a great deal more about them and their role in Smokey's life. The characters include Marvella, the voluptuous neighbour of Smokey's who, up until this book, has simply been the woman who occasionally flirted with him as he arrived home. A more sensitive and serious side to her has now been revealed. Sinkowicz, the white cop who has reluctantly put himself out for Smokey has become his permanent friend in the force and a surprisingly intuitive character.

Truman Johnson, the black cop that Smokey has just started to truly trust reveals a hidden personal life. The most pronounced development though, is the relationship between Jimmy and Smokey, which is becoming increasingly strained. This is mainly due to Jimmy's fear that something will happen to Smokey and he will lose him as has happened to Jimmy so many times in the past.

Jimmy has become moody and uncommunicative and although Smokey seems to be able to solve everyone else's problems, he appears unable to come up with a solution to this one. Nelscott continues to highlight the racial prejudices of the late 's through Smokey Dalton's experiences. But rather than come across as a voice that's shrieking in outraged indignation, it's more weary and grim-faced, occasionally speechless with frustration. None of it makes sense, and all of it threatens everything he believes in.

Smokey gets the woman to a nearby hospital which proves to be a mistake: 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. None of it makes sense, and all of it threatens everything Smokey believes in. Her characters not only struggle with the contradictions that rule them but are in perpetual conflict with their surroundings.