Dying for a Change

Fiction. LGBT Studies. African American Studies. "Move over Easy Rawlins. Step aside Sam Spade. Butch Chan, a soon to be legendary detective, is stalking the cold mean streets of Chicago. Here is prose so raw, and soulful, it strikes the heart and the funny-bone with equal force. 1960s Chicago is rendered so deftly, I can still feel those chill winds blow"--Felicia Ward. DYING FOR A CHANGE is the story about a girl who looks like a boy. Her best friend is a boy who looks like a girl. Together they find a killer of a boy who wants to be a girl. Summer, 1965, and the living is far from easy. The civil rights movement occupies the press. The Watts Riot is heating up Los Angeles and Chicago is hotter than little sister with the pox in August. Chan Parker has no interest in politics. She has her own thing going running numbers for mobster Al Frattini. She prefers quiet no-fuss nights alone with jazz. Her most prized possessions are a shiny black-on-black convertible T-Bird and a reel-to-reel collection of music. But Chan is dying for a change. She needs to get away from the mob. She's fed up with the schemes and scams that keep Negroes broke and broken, she wants something more legit, but what? When Miss Dove, a famous drag queen from a North Side bar, is murdered, her best friend Henrietta Wild Cherry begs Chan to act. Chan and Henrietta go on a mad romp through Chicago, from low life bars to mob dens to find the murderer, and in Chan's case, a new life.