Rhode Island Red

(Paperback)

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Description

A New York Times Best Crime Novel of the Year . The first book in the Nanette Hayes Mystery series introduces us to jazz-loving, street busker Nanette, whose love life leads her into some very hot water. Nan's day is not off to a good start. Her on-again, off-again relationship with Walter is off...again, and when she offers a fellow busker a place to stay for the night he ends up murdered on her kitchen floor. To make matters worse, the busker turns out to have been an undercover cop. And his former partner has taken an immediate and extreme dislike to Nan. When she finds that the dead man stashed a wad of cash in her apartment, cash that could go to help his blind girlfriend, Nan's desire to do the right thing lands her in trouble. Soon she's on the hunt for a legendary saxophone worth its weight in gold. But there are plenty of people who would kill for the priceless instrument, and Nan's new beau just might be one of them.

Reviews

Rereading the out-of-print Rhode Island Red twenty-one years after it was published, I was struck with how perfectly Carter captured pre-gentrification New York City, when young artists could still afford to live by themselves in Manhattan, dive bars thrived, and interlopers werent walking on the wrong side of the sidewalks with their dogs and baby carriages.
Michael Gonzales, CrimeReads


The sweet, clear sound of Nanettes musical voice keeps us on her corner, tossing all the change weve got.
The New York Times

A terrific novel, from those witty, subversive openingsentences, to the edgy, melancholy and very satisfyingending.
Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland

Carters characters rarely do what one might expect. Reading her work just gives you a jolt.
Catapult Magazine

Nanette Hayes may be the most charismatic crime fiction heroine to appear in the last decade.
Booklist

Styles the thing in this breezy, sexy mystery.
Publishers Weekly


"The inauguration of a promising new series."
Crimereads

Author Bio

CHARLOTTE CARTER is the author of an acclaimed mystery series featuring Nanette Hayes, a young black American jazz musician with a lust for life and a talent for crime solving. Coq au Vin, the second book in the series, has been optioned for the movies. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of American and British anthologies. Charlotte Carter has lived in the American Midwest, North Africa and France. She currently resides in NYC.