Detroit Novels
7 primary works • 8 total works
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Book 4
Book 5
Book 6
Book 7
For Minor, who had a colorful, thriving career as a newspaper man twenty years earlier, a last chance to make it big - or take a big fall - has come from Henry Ford II and his new brainchild, the Edsel. Shrouded in secrecy, the E-car is to compete with Cadillac and make Ford Motor Company the number one shop in town...and the world. Minor's job? Sell it to America. Although Minor has his doubts about this car (especially that strange grille), he knows how to make an advertising pitch. But before he can start, he's hit with a hardball proposition from union leader Walter Reuther and a zealous politician looking for pinkos in Detroit's bizarre pro wrestling circuit. Bouncing back and forth between two women - one half his age and the other twice as smart - Connie does what he does best and dives into the Detroit underworld of mobsters, molls, wrestlers, and ex-cops. And finds someone with deadly plans for Henry II's grand dream.
A tough town in a tough time: Detroit during World War II where the U.S. furiously tried to outmanufacture the Germans and Japanese. Industry importer workers to replace men gone to war--Southern whites and blacks working side by side for the first time. Through this tense, troubled world cuts a killer, a self-appointed soldier savaging ordinary people, the defenseless. Lieutenant Zagreb's most important job is to keep the city from exploding, but his job doesn't stop there. He must catch a mad killer with a cop roster of 4-Fs and near-retirees and he has to save his own soul. But, he can't succeed at all three.
THUNDER CITY presents Detroit in the process of becoming the Motor City. Harlan Crownover, scion of a great family of carriage makers, battles with his father to invest in a company run by Henry Ford, who has failed twice before in the autombile business. Desperate for funds, Harlan turns to Big Jim Dolan, the Midwest's most powerful political boss, and Sal Borneo, a visionary Mafioso struggling to bring the commerce of vice into the new century. Allies at first, they soon will be mortal enemies. At the crisis, only Edith Hampton Crownover, Harlan's troubled, aristocratic mother, will be in a position to shift the balance of power.