Chester Himes
Because without him there would be none of us—not me or any of the contemporary Black crime writers I mention below. Cotton Comes to Harlem is a classic and favourite of mine because it brought a cultural swagger to the hardboiled crime novel and because the prose and dialogue are so richly specific to time and place. Together, they read like music.
S.A. Cosby
Cosby is the most natural successor to Himes’s mastery of both style and storytelling heft. His prose has teeth and a guttural rumble of energy and feeling of danger running under every scene, like the low hum of muscle car lying in wait just outside your line of vision. Speaking of muscle cars, Blacktop Wasteland remains my favorite of Cosby’s books.
Walter Mosely
Mosely’s genius lies in his ability to build upon what Himes did with musical language and swagger, by also imbuing his fiction with history and social commentary told through the lens of the human psyche, the wounds we carry, and the scars history leaves. He writes stories of Black men caught in impossible situations, which is the story of being Black in America: being caught in an impossible situation. Devil in a Blue Dress will always have my heart.
Toni Morrison
Because I have always believed that every novel is a crime novel—be it a crime of the heart, a street crime, or a political transgression. To me, Beloved is one of the greatest crime novels ever written. It is a beautiful exploration of the physical and psychological cost of one the greatest crimes in mankind: the moral crime of the enslavement and illegal transport of black Africans to the Americas. If you look closely at many of her books, you may see that she is often exploring some of the darker, criminal impulses in our society.
Alyssa Cole
Cole is a genre-bending writer who may be more well-known for her romance novels. However, her crime novel, When No One is Watching, announced Cole as a storyteller with a gift for books that both thrill and enlighten, exploring themes like the cost and dangers of gentrification (and erasing history), while also pulling the reader into a sinister tale of neighbours disappearing in an historic Brooklyn neighbourhood.
Rachel Howzell Hall
Hall’s standalone thrillers have become a go-to for reading suspense novels set in exotic locales where a feeling a dread hangs heavy in the air, despite the natural beauty of Catalina Island off the California Coast, say, or a private resort in tropical Mexico. They All Fall Down is a favourite of mine for its mix of thrills and humor.
Kellye Garrett
Garrett’s Missing White Woman turned an entire genre on its head, disrupting the trope of the title: the world’s obsession with missing white women. In addition to playing with readers’ expectations about violence and race and who gets to be a “victim” in our society, the book is a page-turner that has many twists and turns you never see coming.
About the author:
Attica Locke is the author of Heaven, My Home, a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, Bluebird, Bluebird which won the CWA Steel Dagger and an Edgar Award; Pleasantville, which won the 2016 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction; Black Water Rising, which was nominated for an Edgar Award and shortlisted for the Orange Prize; and The Cutting Season, a national bestseller and winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Attica Locke has worked on the adaptation of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere and Ava DuVernay's Netflix series about the Central Park Five, When They See Us. Attica’s latest book is Guide Me Home, the blistering, final instalment in the Highway 59 series.
