Point of Darkness — Mike Phillips

Mike Phillips's two previous mysteries, Blood Rights and The Late Candidate, have been celebrated by reviewers across America, for the quality of Phillips's writing and the complex, believable character of Sam Dean, the Jamaican-born, London-bred, street-smart, sexy, self-effacing, tough, and likeable black journalist. Point of Darkness brings Sammy to America - and into the streets of a New York darker, more complex, and more dangerous than most people know.
Coming to the city to deliver a message from a dying friend to his daughter, Sammy finds himself once again entranced by the mixed Afro-Caribbean community of Jamaica, Queens, where many of his West Indies family and friends have relocated. It is a community of laughter and friendship, but also of underground scheming, bucking the system, and danger. What Sammy was planning as a quick trip turns into an intricate and terrifying chase as, first, his friend's daughter disappears - and, then, he gets woven into an expanding web of murder, sex, and sourly corrupt New York City politics, winding into a terrifying cross-country chase.