Aaron Gunner
Created by Gar Anthony Haywood

Shaft he ain't.

South Los Angeles' black private eye, AARON GUNNER may not be an angel, but he's a long way from from Ernest Tidyman's angry, kiss-my-black-ass gumshoe. Sure, Aaron's angry, but it's the 90's and he's finding it difficult to view the world in simply black and white. At one point, he defends a white cop from the wrath of a black mob.

And he's no badmuthafucker-macho--superstud, either. Gunner is a surprisingly human, at times even inept, detective. He can't even decide if he wants to be a detective or help out his cousin Del, an electrician. And Haywood's insistence on covering issues ignored by most other detective writers at the time, such as race relations, black militancy, crack (as opposed to cocaine) and urban gangs, make this fine series worth checking out.A realistic, well-written black eye was a long time in coming, but Aaron certainly was worth the wait. Unfortunately, another fine black eye,Walter Mosely's Easy Rawlins, who works the same turf, has since stolen much of Aaron's thunder. But while Easy works the mean streets of LA's past, Gunner is very much a man of the present.

Author Gar Anthony Haywood, who says his inspiration for Gunner was the old Peter Gunn TV show, won the 1988 Best First P.I. Novel Contest, and has been nominated for several mystery awards. He also won a 1996 Shamus award for Best Short Story and an Anthony for the Gunner story, "And Pray Nobody Sees You."

NOVELS

• Fear of the Dark (1988) ..Buy this book
• Not Long for This World (1990) ..Buy this book
• You Can Die Trying (1993) ..Buy this book
• It's Not a Pretty Sight (1996)..Buy this book
• When Last Seen Alive (1997)..Buy this book
• All the Lucky Ones Are Dead (1999) .Buy this book

SHORT STORIES

• "And Pray Nobody Sees You" (Spring 1997, MHCMM; also Spooks, Spies & Private Eyes)
• "It's Always the Quiet Ones" (Summer 2000, MHCMM)