Rating: 
Summary: Another Great Series
Review: I love a good mystery and Paula Woods has written a winner. Charlotte Justice joins the ranks with other top notch African American female sleuths Tamara Hayle, Blanche White, Star Duvall and newcomer Alex Powell. Our appropriately named heroine is a detective with the LAPD's Homicide Division; she's bright, socially aware and intuitive. Thirteen years ago her husband and baby girl were murdered in the driveway of their home providing Charlotte with a very personal interest in justice being served. The Justice clan is quite a family, all card carrying members of the black bourgeois; brother Perris a former LAPD cop turned criminal defense attorney; his equally ambitious buppie wife Louise; Charlotte's father, a chemist who has made a small fortune manufacturing cosmetics for black women and Mom Justice, a fair-skinned daughter of an upper crust black family. Charlotte cringes at and often breaks the three Justice rules which are 1. Don't marry anyone too light, or too dark 2. Common is a word that should only be applied to stocks not people and 3. Don't even fix your mouth to say you're in love with some white person. There are also several other equally interesting and well developed characters, for instance Steve Hightower, Charlotte's supervisor. With his black mother/Jewish father he has no idea who or what he is and is so uncomfortable around black people he's earned the nickname "incognegro." Unfortunately he's making an exception in Charlotte's case almost making Clarence Thomas look like a choir boy. We also have Aubrey Scott, a gorgeous doctor that Charlotte has known almost all her life. She is so smitten with him she can't think straight, which hopefully won't turn out to be a bad move. Inner City Blues is set in LA during the riots that followed the Rodney King verdict. The man who stole Charlotte's life Cinque Lewis is found dead and Lance Mitchell, a doctor who works with Aubrey, is the main suspect. Charlotte hopes to be able to clear Lance's good name and also find out where Lewis has been hiding for the last thirteen years. I can't wait to read the second book of the series "Stormy Weather". I've already ordered my copy. Reviewed by Ruby
APOOO BookClub
Rating: 
Summary: Detective Justice Oh My!
Review: I loved it! Paula Woods has hooked me on Det Justice and they both have a life long fan in me.
Rating: 
Summary: Fell short of my expectations...
Review: I picked this book up with high expectations. Unfortunately those expectations were dashed. While this book was a decent read, it is not a book I'd recommend. The primary reason is its slow pace. The main plot was interesting -- the police procedural side of the story, the subplots -- dealing in romance, etc. were not. While there was a small bit of action and alot of investigative activity, there was no excitement or tension associated with it. The book just plodded along spouting out one boring detail after another about the characters' dreary lives. It got so bad that I began daydreaming towards the end of the book (on the last tape) and I missed how the villain arrived on the scene for one last try at eliminating anyone that could reveal his/her identity. The sad thing is, I didn't care enough to rewind the tape to listen and find out. I was just glad for the book to end. The author has potential, but this is not a book I'd recommend.
Rating:
Summary: My vote goes to Woods
Review: It seems there are a rash of books out right now that revisit L.A.'s recent, volatile racial history. After reading Kellerman and Connelly and now Paula Woods' INNER CITY BLUES, my vote goes to Woods for the most realistic portrayal of the racial nuances of L.A. and the secrets that threaten to destroy the city. And besides the thrills and suspense, this book is sexy, funny, and gave me as a reader a great taste of black life in LA I never knew existed. And I want the recipe for that Electric Lemonade the heroine, LAPD homicide detective Charlotte Justice, drinks--it sounds heavenly!
Rating: 
Summary: The Birth of a Cop
Review: Living in Los Angeles, which has always had one of the most, shall we say, aggressive police forces in the country, I saw first hand what it was like to be "policed." When I was five I saw my father get stopped by the LAPD and humiliated for DWB (driving while black). He and I were first hand witnesses to white officers beating black citizens during the Watts riots in 1965. And, unfortunately, I was also front and center when the city of tarnished angels exploded in fires and freestyle shopping without a credit card in 1992. But from the sixties to the nineties, policing in Los Angeles had changed dramatically to include officers who looked like my father, my mother, and me. But an organization's culture doesn't change as dramatically as its complexion, something I'd learned myself working in corporate America for almost twenty years. Because I had faced a crisis of conscience in my own career ^×a point when I had to decide could I remain in an organization whose values did not mesh with mine, regardless of the job titles and monetary baubles dangled before me^×I wondered whether women, and specifically black women, faced similar challenges in policing. That question sparked months of research, of talking to women detectives i n the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies, of discussing research on sexual harassment with sociologists, of tracking every instance of sexual and racial discrimination in policing I could find. My work culminated in the creation of Inner City Blues and Charlotte Justice, a black female homicide detective working in the LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division, the same division that investigates high profile cases like the Ennis Cosby and Nicole Brown Simpson/Ron Goldman murders. Birthing Charlotte was simple enough in some ways^×there are no female homicide detective in RHD, so I had full creative license there^×but very difficult in others. She had to be very good at her job or there would have been no way she could have shattered RHD's bulletproof glass ceiling, which required me to learn just what makes for a stand-out detective in the LAPD. But I also wanted Charlotte to reflect the conflicting emotions I'd seen in every female officer I encountered^× how to be tough as nails while being feminine enough to have your nails done! And if you do express your femininity^×do your nails and wear a little lipstick^×will you be taken seriously by your colleagues? Or will some male predator riding in your squad car, or sitting at the desk across from you, interpret your expressing who you are as a personal come-on? For black officers, the dilemma gets even deeper^×how do you maintain yo ur self-esteem on the job when you come from a community that generally despises police officers as oppressors, that has seen some of its members "taken downtown for questioning," never to return? Does a career in policing make you a sell-out, an Oreo^×black on the outside, but white on the inside? What motivates you to "keep on keeping on?" Another issue I wanted to explore stems from a common mistake I see people make all the time^×assuming cops don't have a life beyond their jobs. So it was especially important to me that Charlotte have a family, that she come from a culture that I hoped readers would find fascinating, one which would give them a rich slice of contemporary black L.A. life beyond the gang bangers, athletes, and entertainers seen on television. So I intentionally made Charlotte's View Park family a group high-achievers but a little wacky, too^×from her Southern-talking, mad scientist of a father (actually a successful cosmetics chemist) to her Saks-shopping, aging debutante of a mother, from her big brother, a cop-turned-crusading attorney, to a younger sister who's working on a second doctorate degree in psychology and thinks Charlotte's career in the LAPD is part of an unresolved "Supersister" complex. Not to mention her boxer, Beast^×modeled after our own beloved Sampson, an eleven year old boxer-with-an-attitude^×who exhibits his own crime-fighting abilities. Is there any wonder poor Charlotte sees herself at family gatherings as "a cloth coat in a room full of mink?" As you can see, my girl Charlotte does have a good sense of humor which sh e needs^×along with some good loving, courtesy of Aubrey Scott, an old flame (see Chapter 13 for a sample)^×to get through the adventures she undertakes in Inner City Blues. Because I love L.A. and feel it's always gotten a bad rap as a tarted-up tinsel town with no history or culture, I also tried to bring a bit of historical perspective to the proceedings and predicaments in which Charlotte finds herself embroiled. For example, in the novel, which is set in the 1992 riots, Charlotte unravels the long-ago disappearance of a black radical, which gave me a chance to comment on everything from the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 to the Black Panthers and the Symbionese Liberation Army. And the buildings where some of the action takes place are designed by Paul R. Williams^×not the seventies songwriter but an exceptionally talented black architect who designed everything from mansions to mortuaries, territory Charlotte comes to know quite intimately over the course of the novel. There was a phrase chanted in L.A. during the riots of 1992, "No Justice, No Peace." Birthing Charlotte Justice has made me understand just how true that slogan is. Charlotte has become a part of my psyche now, and writing of her adventures in a post-modern paradise a way of exploring and exorcising the demons and misconceptions that plague us all. I hope you get as much enjoyment reading about Charlotte's adventures as I did writing them.
Rating:
Summary: The Birth of a Cop
Review: Living in Los Angeles, which has always had one of the most, shall we say, aggressive police forces in the country, I saw first-hand what it was like to be "policed." When I was five I saw my father get stopped by the LAPD and humiliated for DWB (driving while black). He and I were first-hand witnesses to white officers beating black citizens during the Watts riots in 1965. And, unfortunately, I was also front and center when the city of tarnished angels exploded in fires and freestyle shopping without a credit card in 1992. But from the sixties to the nineties, policing in Los Angeles had changed dramatically to include officers who looked like my father, my mother, and me. But an organization's culture doesn't change as dramatically as its complexion, something I'd learned myself working in corporate America for almost twenty years. Because I had faced a crisis of conscience in my own career--a point when I had to decide could I remain in an organization whose values did not mesh with mine, regardless of the job titles and monetary baubles dangled before me--I wondered whether women, and specifically black women, faced similar challenges in policing. That question sparked months of research, of talking to women detectives in the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies, of discussing research on sexual harassment with sociologists, of tracking every instance of sexual and racial discrimination in policing I could find. My work culminated in the creation of "Inner City Blues" and Charlotte Justice, a black female homicide detective working in the LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division, the same division that investigates high-profile cases like the Ennis Cosby and Nicole Brown Simpson/Ron Goldman murders. Birthing Charlotte was simple enough in some ways--there are no female homicide detective in RHD, so I had full creative license there--but very difficult in others. She had to be very good at her job or there would have been no way she could have shattered RHD's bulletproof glass ceiling, which required me to learn just what makes for a stand-out detective in the LAPD. But I also wanted Charlotte to reflect the conflicting emotions I'd seen in every female officer I encountered--how to be tough as nails while being feminine enough to have your nails done! And if you do express your femininity--do your nails and wear a little lipstick--will you be taken seriously by your colleagues? Or will some male predator riding in your squad car, or sitting at the desk across from you, interpret your expressing who you are as a personal come-on? For black officers, the dilemma gets even deeper--how do you maintain your self-esteem on the job when you come from a community that generally despises police officers as oppressors, that has seen some of its members "taken downtown for questioning," never to return? Does a career in policing make you a sell-out, an Oreo-black on the outside, but white on the inside? What motivates you to "keep on keeping on?" Another issue I wanted to explore stems from a common mistake I see people make all the time-assuming cops don't have a life beyond their jobs. So it was especially important to me that Charlotte have a family, that she come from a culture that I hoped readers would find fascinating, one which would give them a rich slice of contemporary black L.A. life beyond the gang bangers, athletes, and entertainers seen on television. So I intentionally made Charlotte's View Park family a group of high-achievers but a little wacky, too--from her Southern-talking, mad scientist of a father (actually a successful cosmetics chemist) to her Saks-shopping, aging debutante of a mother, from her big brother, a cop-turned-crusading attorney, to a younger sister who's working on a second doctorate degree in psychology and thinks Charlotte's career in the LAPD is part of an unresolved "Supersister" complex. Not to mention her boxer, Beast-modeled after our own beloved Sampson, an eleven-year-old boxer with an attitude who exhibits his own crime-fighting abilities. Is there any wonder poor Charlotte sees herself at family gatherings as "a cloth coat in a room full of mink?" As you can see, my girl Charlotte does have a good sense of humor which she needs--along with some good loving, courtesy of Aubrey Scott, an old flame (see Chapter 13 for a sample)--to get through the adventures she undertakes in "Inner City Blues." Because I love L.A. and feel it's always gotten a bad rap as a tarted-up tinsel town with no history or culture, I also tried to bring a bit of historical perspective to the proceedings and predicaments in which Charlotte finds herself embroiled. For example, in the novel, which is set in the 1992 riots, Charlotte unravels the long-ago disappearance of a black radical, which gave me a chance to comment on everything from the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 to the Black Panthers and the Symbionese Liberation Army. And the buildings where some of the action takes place are designed by Paul R. Williams--not the seventies songwriter but an exceptionally talented black architect who designed everything from mansions to mortuaries, territory Charlotte comes to know quite intimately over the course of the novel. There was a phrase chanted in L.A. during the riots of 1992, "No Justice, No Peace." Birthing Charlotte Justice has made me understand just how true that slogan is. Charlotte has become a part of my psyche now, and writing of her adventures in a post-modern paradise was a way of exploring and exorcising the demons and misconceptions that plague us all. I hope you enjoy her adventures.
Rating: 
Summary: a worthy first effort
Review: Paula Woods debuts a new entry into the world of mysteries - black homicide detective Charlotte Justice is an interesting and compelling character. Her unique status as a female and African American in the LAPD makes this an interesting read. The mystery on the other hand is not too shocking and uses the ABC method (the murder is not A, or B, so who's left method). The police procedure aspects could also use a bit of work and further technical authenticity. The personal life portions and the dwelling of her romance, in particular the sexual encounters, is at times embarassing and unnecessary. However, despite all of this, it is still a worthy read simply to get a fresh perspective in this sometimes cliched genre.
Rating:
Summary: a worthy first effort
Review: Paula Woods debuts a new entry into the world of mysteries - black homicide detective Charlotte Justice is an interesting and compelling character. Her unique status as a female and African American in the LAPD makes this an interesting read. The mystery on the other hand is not too shocking and uses the ABC method (the murder is not A, or B, so who's left method). The police procedure aspects could also use a bit of work and further technical authenticity. The personal life portions and the dwelling of her romance, in particular the sexual encounters, is at times embarassing and unnecessary. However, despite all of this, it is still a worthy read simply to get a fresh perspective in this sometimes cliched genre.
Rating:
Summary: Fell short of my expectations...
Review: Read this title as a book club selection based upon reviews by other customers. I was not at all impressed with the story. I do give much credit to the author as I feel she is a great writer, however, I did not enjoy the story and once you find out who did what, I simply was not suprised. Think the author could have did better on the plot as it wasn't a thick one!
Rating:
Summary: NOT SATISFIED
Review: Read this title as a book club selection based upon reviews by other customers. I was not at all impressed with the story. I do give much credit to the author as I feel she is a great writer, however, I did not enjoy the story and once you find out who did what, I simply was not suprised. Think the author could have did better on the plot as it wasn't a thick one!
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