Trip Wire A Cook County Mystery

OfJackson Park, the first Cook County mystery featuring an unconventional trio of sleuths, Margo Jeffersonof The New York Timessaid, "Charlotte Carter blends street savvy with wry urbanity and delivers a truly modern big-city crime tale." Now Carter returns with another suspenseful novel that brings the black experience to vivid life during one of the most turbulent times in American history. It is December 1968. In the wake of assassinations and the violence of the Democratic convention in Chicago, "Summer of Love" idealism has disintegrated into suspicion and disillusion. On the city's North Side, twentyishCassandra Perry longs to be independent. She leaves the overprotective embrace of her granduncle and grandaunt, Woody ans Ivy Lisle, and moves into a multiracial commune dedicated to brotherhood and just causes. But Cassandra's search for identity plunges her into the dark side of peace, love, and unlimited freedomeven before she discovers the brutally violated bodies of the commune's most charismatic activist couple. As Cassandra investigates with the help of Woody and Ivy, she begins to see some friendsespecially one of her dearestin a disturbing, deadly light. But when the three amateur sleuths run afoul of a police cover-up with explosive political ramifications, they face a desperate enemy determined to bury thealong with the truth.

Charlotte Carter has worked as an editor and as a teacher. She is the author of the Nanette Hayes mystery series and the novel Walking Bones. She is a longtime fan of mystery fiction and film noir. She lives in New York City.