Not Long for This World: An Aaron Gunner Mystery

L.A. private eye Aaron Gunner has familiar qualities: he's youngish, not very successful (his ``office'' is behind a barber shop), eyed askance by cops but appreciatively by pretty women, medium-boiled with a strong ethical sense. The hook is he's black. When Darrel Lovejoy, head of a church-related Peace Patrol helping young gang members, is killed in a ``drive-by,'' a witness names two ``gang-bangers.'' The public defender of a jailed suspect asks Gunner to find the missing driver. Gunner is soon immersed in the squalid world of violence, drugs, readily available automatic weapons and the bone-deep despair of L.A. adolescent gangs. The eyewitness is a crackhead fed by a nasty drug dealer; the fugitive's older brother is not the upright citizen everyone thinks; a high-profile minister has his own secret; and some of the teenagers are frightening creatures. The title applies to them. The appealing Gunner was featured in Haywood's 1987 Fear of the Dark , which won Best First Private Eye Novel. (June)