New York, NY: Penguin Putnam (2014)

Thirty-six years ago, a nameless black man wandered into Jericho, Mississippi, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a pair of paratrooper boots. Less than two days later, he was accused of rape and murder, hunted down by a self-appointed posse, and lynched.
Now evidence has surfaced of his innocence, and county sheriff Quinn Colson sets out not only to identify the strangers remains, but to charge those responsible for the lynching. As he starts to uncover old lies and dirty secrets, though, he runs up against fierce opposition from those with the most to lose–and they can play dirty themselves.
Soon Colson will find himself accused of terrible crimes, and the worst part is, the accusations just might stick. As the two investigations come to a head, it is anybodys guess who will prevail–or even come out of it alive.

New York, NY: Penguin Putnam (2013)

The remarkable third novel in a thrilling new series about the real Deep South from a “New York Times”-bestselling author. A year after becoming sheriff, Quinn Colson is faced with the release of an infamous murderer from prison. Casey Dixon comes back to Jericho preaching redemption, and some believe him; but for the victim’s family, the only thought is revenge.

New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press (1998)

Inscribed copy

Where in mystery fiction is a blues hero? You can find him in New Orleans, Louisiana, living in his battered 1920s warehouse or playing harmonica at JoJo’s Blues Bar in the French Quarter. His name is Nick Travers, an ex-New Orleans Saint turned blues historian at Tulane University. And this time he’s headed deep into the heart of the blues – the Mississippi Delta.
In August of 1938, the most celebrated figure in blues history, Robert Johnson, was murdered in Greenwood, Mississippi. Some say a jealous husband poisoned him at a juke joint. Others believe his death had something to do with selling his soul to the devil at the crossroads. Almost sixty years later, a college professor disappears into the Delta while following rumors of nine unknown Johnson recordings. Travers leaves Tulane to track the professor. Clues point to everyone from an eccentric albino named Cracker to a nineteen-year-old hitman who believes he is the second coming of Elvis Presley.

New York, NY: Thomas Dunne Books (2000)

Christmas Eve on the South Side. A gray coldness envelops the crumbling housing projects and tattered neighborhoods. In the music clubs, the blues – once as strong as the backs of the neighborhood’s working class – has lost its hope and its voice.
Seventy miles away – locked in a scarred prison cell – waits Ruby Walker, a woman who in every way is the South Side. More than forty years ago she – like several million Southern blacks during the Great Migration – boarded the Illinois Central from Mississippi to what she believed was her promised land. She became one of the greatest blues singers the city has ever known, only to lose it all after being convicted of murdering her lover and producer, Billy Lyons, in September 1959.
Decades later, a flickering hope emerges to Walker in the form of letters from a Tulane University blues historian named Nick Savers. She agrees to an interview only in exchange for him checking out what she calls the truth behind Lyons’s last hours.
After arriving at Union Station, Travers – a year after searching for the lost recordings of blues phantom Robert Johnson – learns there are those who still want the details surrounding Lyons’s death to remain hidden in the nibble of the blighted neighborhoods.