A Harlem Renaissance Mystery Series

Caught between her family back in Harlem and her glamorous new life, Louise Lloyd finds that her knack for solving crimes translates when she’s called to investigate un meurtre in Paris.

When band leader Pierre Rochefort’s throat is slit during a blackout at Club Minuit, his friend and former lover asks Louise Lloyd and her best friend, Rafael Moreno, to investigate. Louise goes undercover as a dancer with Rafael as the new piano player at Club Minuit. The pair now have access to a myriad of suspects, from performers to producers.

Falling back on her expertise as a former showgirl, Louise finds out that Pierre was not exactly beloved by his fellow bandmates. She and Raphael also realize that the town’s hottest club is losing money hand over fist. There seems to be something fishy about the club’s manager who keeps an iron grip on the dancers and also has files on all of the club’s employees in his office.

As they untangle the many affairs and secrets of the crew of Club Minuit, Louise and Rafael realize that to catch a killer, they’ll have to outwit everyone around them or face the music.

Louise Lloyd’s time away in Paris is everything she was hoping it would be until a shocking murder turns her entire world upside down.

Louise Lloyd is finally living the quiet life she’d longed for, working in a parfumerie by day and spending time with her new friends every night at the Aquarius club in Paris. When a desperate mother asks for help locating her artist daughter, Louise initially refuses to keep her hard-won but fragile peace intact. But the woman comes with a letter of introduction from an old friend in Harlem, and Louise realizes she has no choice but to do what she can to find the missing young woman.

The woman’s daughter, Iris Wright, is part of an elite social circle. Louise soon finds herself drawn into a world of privilege and ice-cold ambition—a young group of artists who will do anything to get ahead—but would they murder one of their own? With the help of some friends from home, Louise must untangle a web of lies, jealousy, and betrayal to find out what really happened to Iris while fighting to keep her new life from crashing down around her.

Named a 2022 People Magazine best book of the summer!

A riveting Harlem Renaissance Mystery featuring Louise Lloyd, a young Black woman working in a hot new speakeasy when she gets caught up in a murder that hits too close to home…

Harlem, 1927. Twenty-seven-year-old Louise Lloyd has found the perfect job! She is the new manager of the Dove, a club owned by her close friend Rafael Moreno. There Louise meets Nora Davies, one of the girls she was kidnapped with a decade ago. The two women—along with Rafael and his sister, Louise’s girlfriend, Rosa Maria—spend the night at the Dove, drinking and talking. The next morning, Rosa Maria wakes up covered in blood, with no memory of the previous night. Nora is lying dead in the middle of the dance floor. 
 
Louise knows Rosa Maria couldn’t have killed Nora, but the police have a hard time believing that no one can remember anything at all about what happened. When Louise and Rosa Maria return to their apartment after being questioned by the police, they find the word GUILTY written across the living room wall in paint that looks a lot like blood. Someone has gone to great lengths to frame and terrify Rosa Maria, and Louise will stop at nothing to clear the woman she loves.

“In this terrific series opener, Afia evokes the women’s lives in all their wayward and beautiful glory, especially the abruptness with which their dreams, hopes and fears cease to exist.”–The New York Times

The start of an exciting new historical mystery series set during the Harlem Renaissance from debut author Nekesa Afia

Harlem, 1926. Young Black women like Louise Lloyd are ending up dead.

Following a harrowing kidnapping ordeal when she was in her teens, Louise is doing everything she can to maintain a normal life. She’s succeeding, too. She spends her days working at Maggie’s Café and her nights at the Zodiac, Harlem’s hottest speakeasy. Louise’s friends, especially her girlfriend, Rosa Maria Moreno, might say she’s running from her past and the notoriety that still stalks her, but don’t tell her that.

When a girl turns up dead in front of the café, Louise is forced to confront something she’s been trying to ignore—two other local Black girls have been murdered in the past few weeks. After an altercation with a police officer gets her arrested, Louise is given an ultimatum: She can either help solve the case or wind up in a jail cell. Louise has no choice but to investigate and soon finds herself toe-to-toe with a murderous mastermind hell-bent on taking more lives, maybe even her own….