Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right

Ten years ago, as related in Down the River Unto the Sea, Joe King Oliver, a Black private eye, was framed for assault and sent to Riker’s. The three months he spent inside changed how he saw the world: he’s not so quick to play by the rules anymore. In his third outing (after Every Man a King), he juggles two explosive assignments. A billionaire hires him to find the wife who ran out on him, taking their seven-year-old daughter. He wants his daughter back, but Joe soon realizes he also wants revenge. If Joe turns him down, though, he’s signed his own death warrant. Then Joe’s 93-year-old grandmother asks him to find his father, Odin, who was imprisoned for homicide when Joe was young. Joe wants nothing to do with Odin, whom he blames for his family’s disintegration, but he can’t say no to his grandmother, who wants to see her son before she dies. So Joe ends up looking for a father he hates while saving a mother and child from a violent, sociopathic man.