Yes, Matt Moulton is a real dick—and a private one at that. But the antiheroic gumshoe knows more about the realities of race than his average fellow white guy in 1950 America. He fell deeply in love with a beautiful black woman, and then lost her. Was he responsible for rubbing out their romance or was an intolerant society the culprit?
Now based in LA, Moulton grapples with and grieves over that past as he wins his latest high-risk, high-reward client, a black woman who leads her dead white husband’s mob in Chicago. Her daughter disappeared without a trace after moving to LA to pursue the nearly impossible dream of becoming a movie star. The mob lady believes that no one is better suited to find out what happened to her girl than this tough but racially sensitive shamus.
His client’s skin color alienates mob competitors, but her ruthless aggression enrages them. Could a vengeful Chicago gang have kidnapped and executed her daughter? Or did the declining and increasingly sordid Hollywood dream-factory system cause her disappearance or, perhaps, death?
Moulton gets too close to an answer: Someone tries on three occasions to silence him—permanently. Encountering corporate organized crime, a corrupt LA police force, and Hollywood’s history of racial bias and exploitation, the embattled and embittered Moulton must find a way to not only solve his case but also somehow survive it. The odds seem to conspire against him.
With its hardboiled attitude, driving narrative, and genre-subverting racial and gender sensibility, “Fade to Black” recaptures literary noir and yet reimagines it, essentially putting the dark in a thrilling new light.
“Fade to Black” is scheduled to be published by Level Best Books in early 2025.
