DARKNESS AND THE DEVIL BEHIND ME: A LANIE PRICE MYSTERY - Softcover

This book introduces Lanie Price, a compassionate, but relentless news reporter, who worked in Harlem during the 1920s. This was a glamorous era, a time of ermine and diamonds and jazz and gimlets; a time when white society and black artists entered into partnerships. Lanie, an affluent woman in her own right, covers the good and the bad and the sometimes ugly happenings in Harlem society.

On a dark night in December, she finds herself covering the very worst -- the disappearance of Esther, a well-loved and up-and-coming young pianist, a woman who had everything to live for. This will turn into what we call a cold case. No answers are found and Esther's family grieves for three long years. Then her sister asks Lanie to revisit the case. It's a request she reluctantly accepts, but once she gets started, she can't stop.
Lanie was inspired by my mother's compassion, her resoluteness and her glamor. Unlike my mother, of course, Lanie married a wealthy surgeon. But like her, Lanie started out poor and worked her way up.

Lanie has known personal loss as well: the early death of her husband, Hamp, the only man she had ever loved.
That is, until Sam Delaney walked into her life. As her editor at the news room, Sam tries his best to protect Lanie from her own investigatory instincts. Meanwhile, he took has a past, a mysterious and perhaps dark past, about which she would some day like to know.
I love Lanie and Sam. I enjoyed spending time with them and hope you will, too. I also hope you'll enjoy going along for the ride as Lanie digs deep, and then deeper, to reveal the fate of that young woman who disappeared so quickly, so completely, on that night so long ago.
--Persia

Persia Walker is also the author of Black Orchid Blues and the award-winning  Harlem Redux, which the Boston Globe called "a full, vibrant portrait of that storied era when Harlem's pulse was the rhythm of black America." She was also a contributor to the anthology The Blue Religion - New Stories About Cops, Criminals and the Chase. A former news writer for The Associated Press, she lives in New York.