Color of Justice: A Novel of Suspense

Acclaimed author, screenwriter, and filmmaker Gary Hardwick has been called "the Elmore Leonard of black mystery writers" (Seattle Times). Now he returns with a shattering tale of suspense that revitalizes the crime novel with passion, truth, and an uncompromising insight into a world defined by money, power, and dangerous secrets.

Detroit detective Danny Cavanaugh is a white Irish Catholic cop who has been raised in the dangerous bosom of the inner city. He speaks and acts with the unmistakable attitude of a black man, which has made him an enigma to his colleagues and a legend on the street. But lately Cavanaugh has come under fire: His alleged use of excessive force has placed him under the intense scrutiny of his department's superiors. He's been rocked by a devastating and suspicious personal tragedy. His live-in African American girlfriend is growing distant. And a horrific double homicide is threatening to push him over the edge.

An affluent black couple has been savagely tortured and executed in their upscale home. It is a monstrous crime whose cunning perpetrator seems to understand the intricacies of forensic science. The killings appear to be an isolated incident to most in Detroit's Special Crimes Unit, but Cavanaugh detects the troubling shade of something uglier. A second murder -the slaying of yet another prominent member of Detroit's African American elite-confirms his suspicions and plunges Cavanaugh into the treacherous underbelly of the city, a place where he has spent much of his life but is still unwelcome.

Cavanaugh discovers that there is something deadly and explosive infecting the Motor City and starts a full-throttle investigation. But a white cop with a checkered past doesn't win any friends asking embarrassing questions of the city's black power elite, and the enemies he makes threaten to destroy everything he still holds in his tenuous grasp. It will take all of his strength and ingenuity, both as a cop and a denizen of the street, for Danny Cavanaugh to stay alive in the wake of a terrifying crime wave and its shocking and unthinkable repercussions, as each harrowing revelation carries him closer to brutal truths about himself ... and uncovers a motive for murder as stark and sharply delineated as black and white.