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Gar Anthony Haywood

Winner of the Shamus Award: A failed private eye searches Los Angeles for a murderous white supremacist.

Aaron Gunner made a lousy private detective. After a year’s carnage in Vietnam and a quick exit from the police academy, private work was the only avenue he saw to be a hero. But the seediness, tedium, and lack of real power crushed his hopes, and he quit the job after inadvertently setting a pregnant woman up for a violent death. But after a savage racial murder, it may be time to come out of retirement. 

The white man comes to the Acey Deuce, a bar in South Central Los Angeles, to blow the head off a young black militant. The dead radical’s sister pays Gunner a visit with a .22 revolver, and convinces him to find her brother’s killer. As Gunner draws closer to answers, prejudice and rage threaten to tear Los Angeles apart. To save the city—and himself—Aaron Gunner must finally find his calling.

MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

The Aaron Gunner Mysteries

Fear of the Dark

A lawyer hires Gunner to help her prove that her gangland client is not a killer 

Darrel Lovejoy doesn’t owe South Central anything. By all accounts, he is lucky to escape this desperate corner of Los Angeles, to go to college and graduate into a well-paid advertising job. But something compels him to return. He dives into social work, attempting to mediate between the gangs which have brought hell to the streets he grew up on, and he makes slow but steady progress up until the day a shotgun blast cuts him down. After an unusually forthcoming witness swears she saw a car of Imperial Blues kill Lovejoy, the police arrest Blue soldier Toby Mills. Suspecting a frame-up, Toby’s lawyer hires private detective Aaron Gunner to vet the woman’s story. To find out why South Central’s favourite son had to die, Gunner will turn gangland upside down.

Not Long for This World

Gunner attempts to set the record straight for a dead police officer with a racist past 

No one in South Central is surprised when Jack McGovern, a brutally racist cop, is accused of gunning down a black teenager in cold blood. But they are shocked when the LAPD actually responds to the charges, firing McGovern and leaving him without badge, pension, or pride. Eight months later, a thief breaks into a stereo store and encounters the disgraced cop, now a night security guard. McGovern draws his gun and, to the thief’s surprise, shoots himself in the head. 

Few mourn the suicide, but one citizen is unsettled. A witness to the shooting that ended McGovern’s career, Mitchell Flowers knows the cop wasn’t lying when he said the teenager had fired first. Flowers hires private detective Aaron Gunner to clear the dead cop’s name—pitting Gunner against every civilian in South Central. Soon Gunner tugs on a chain of police corruption that stretches all the way to the top of the LAPD.

You Can Die Trying

When his ex-fiancée is murdered, Gunner vows to take vengeance on Los Angeles 

For more than a decade, private detective Aaron Gunner has regretted letting Nina Hillman go. They met on a city bus while he was on his way to the Los Angeles Coliseum for a football game, and by the time they were through talking he had long since missed kickoff. He proposed to her quickly, only to get cold feet and cancel the wedding. After less than a year, she married another man. Eleven years later, Gunner is still alone, and Nina’s house is a crime scene. 

The homicide detectives tell Gunner that Nina’s husband has been abusing her for years. They assume that today he simply went too far. As he seeks justice for his long-lost love, Gunner uncovers a citywide chain of domestic abuse that he could have saved Nina from, had he been man enough to marry her. It’s too late to protect her now. Revenge will have to do.

It's Not a Pretty Sight

An encounter at the Million Man March sucks Gunner into an ice-cold missing persons case Elroy Covington should have run. He had traveled to the Million Man March in Washington, DC, looking forward to a new city and new faces. Then in a Dupont Circle restaurant, a twist of fate brought him face to face with a man from his long-forgotten past. Instead of running, Elroy said hello. He never made it home. Eight months later, Elroy’s sister shows up in the Los Angeles office of private detective Aaron Gunner, who traded business cards with Elroy at the march and promptly forgot they ever met. Elroy’s last known location was Los Angeles, and his sister thinks he was coming to see the detective. As he tries to warm up Elroy’s frigid trail, Gunner uncovers ties to a black militant group. The time for brotherhood is over, and finding the vanished marcher will mean getting tough.

When Last Seen Alive

Investigating the alleged suicide of a hip-hop star, Gunner uncovers a murderCarlton Elbridge, better known as C. E. Digga Jones, was too nice for gangsta rap. When he allegedly shot himself, he had millions in the bank, his face on the cover of Time magazine, and a nation of fanatics to mourn his death. He was found in a locked room, gun in his hand and bullet in his brain, and the police assumed it was suicide. Only the rapper’s father thinks otherwise. Suspecting that his son was killed as the result of a hip-hop feud, Carlton’s father hires private detective Aaron Gunner to investigate the death. As Gunner tries to juggle the case with security work for a conservative black talk-show host, he learns that for some in the hip-hop world, the thug life is much more than an act.