In A Death in Harlem, famed scholar Karla Holloway weaves a mystery in the bon vivant world of the Harlem Renaissance. Taking as her point of departure the tantalizingly ambiguous “death by misadventure” at the climax of Nella Larsen’s 1929 best-selling novel Passing, Holloway takes readers back to the sunlit boulevards and shaded sidestreets of Jazz Age New York. A murder there will test the mettle, resourcefulness, and intuition of Harlem’s first “colored” policeman, Weldon Haynie Thomas.

Clear glass towers rising in Manhattan belie a city where people are often not what they seem. For some here, identity is a performance of passing—passing for another race, for another class, for someone safe to trust. Thomas’s investigation illuminates the societies and secret societies, the intricate code of manners, the world of letters, and the broad social currents of 1920’s Harlem.

A Death in Harlem is an exquisitely crafted, briskly paced, and impeccably stylish journey back to a time still remembered as a peak of American glamour. It introduces Holloway as a fresh voice in storytelling and Weldon Haynie Thomas as an endearing and unforgettable detective.

THE AUTHOR

Karla FC Holloway is James. B. Duke Professor (Emerita) of English and Law at Duke University, where her research and teaching included African American literary and cultural studies, bioethics, gender, and law. She is the author of eight books, including Passed On: African-American Mourning Stories, Private Bodies/Public Texts: Race, Gender, and a Cultural Bioethics, and Legal Fictions: Constituting Race, Composing Literatures.