When Last Seen Alive

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"A gritty compelling read," praised Entertainment Weekly of last year's It's Not a Pretty Sight. And the Chicago Tribune called it, along with other Aaron Gunner novels, "terrifically entertaining." With When Last Seen Alive, Gar Anthony Haywood plumbs the shocking all-too-real world of South-Central Los Angeles. Having more clients than he can use isn't generally Aaron Gunner's problem, but it happens that the PI is already on a case when beautiful Yolanda McCreary appears on his doorstep to offer him a second one. Her brother, Elroy Covington, apparently rubbed elbows with Gunner at the Million Man March in Washington DC, several months earlier, then neglected to do something almost every other attendee did afterward: come home. Gunner can't remember Covington, but takes on the case - unprepared for the cold trail the man left behind. At last, Gunner begins to suspect that a black extremist group calling itself The Defenders of the Bloodline is behind Covington's disappearance. The Defenders want Gunner to join them. The FBI wants Gunner's help in bringing them down. And neither party has any intention of taking no for an answer. With When Last Seen Alive, Gar Anthony Haywood explores the harsh realities of contemporary Los Angeles with grim accuracy and deep emotional insight, providing once again "a first-rate story, melding sharp social commentary with lively plotting and somersaulting dialogue" (The Washington Post Book World)From Library JournalA young Los Angeles woman wants series star Aaron Gunner to locate her brother, who never returned from the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. Gunner soon finds himself tangling with black extremists and the FBI. Realistic and compelling.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsElroy Covington came a long way to disappear--all the way from the Million Man March in Washington to a run-down motel in Hollywood--but his sister, Yolanda McCreary, is convinced that even though LAPD Missing Persons has given up the search, Aaron Gunner can find Covington. Aaron, already busy trying to photograph L.A. city councilman Gil Everson with one of the limping prostitutes his wife Connie is convinced he favors, is none too eager to take on the case. Even so, he hands the snoop job off to aspiring teenaged photographer Sly Cribbs in order to look for Covington himself--and before you know it, somebody's tried to kill both Sly and Aaron and (talk about coincidence) steal crucial photos from both of them. Aaron's sure the councilman's beefy bodyguard could tell him all about the attack on the kid, but he thinks something still doesn't jibe, and he's right: The tug-of-war between the Eversons is more complicated than he can see. And the search for Covington leads Aaron (It's Not a Pretty Sight, 1996, etc.) into even deeper trouble with the Defenders of the Bloodline, a black-supremacist answer to the Ku Klux Klan bent on executing all the Uncle Toms the KKK might have missed on their last trip through town, and with a five-year-old newspaper scandal that won't stay dead. Ingenious but slapdash in the details, with Aaron continuing as one of the most maddeningly intuitive detectives since Nancy Drew. Start reading for the plot, and you'll stay, as usual, for the flavorsome African-American backgrounds. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.