I’m honored that the The Rap Sheet has chosen to run my short essay on Ed Lacy’s Room To Swing as part of their ongoing Friday blog series “The Book You Have To Read.” I first wrote about Room to Swing in an article on Civil Rights Era mystery novels for Mystery Scene and I’ve been wanting to recommend the book again ever since. Today marks 52 years since nine black students were escorted by the armed soldiers into Little Rock High School — a milestone in the history of U.S. integration — and since Room to Swing, which appeared the same year, deals explicitly with integration, civil rights, and the roots of racism, today seems a fitting time to remember this time. Check out the article here!
