It's 1954, one year after the Red Harvest, and crime has replaced prosperity in Southville's business and sin districts. Moneylending ravages Bean County and increases hostilities between the Turk and the Roseland Boys, led by eager-to-retire Izzy Rabinowitz, the Rainmaker. The Turk disturbs his mournful and bloody path to emigration to the new nation for Jews. In his grief, he means war.
Former Chicago Police Detective Elliot Caprice awakes to find the Turk's goons Chester and Gimp on his front porch with a fated proposition: his teenage daughter went missing in the night carrying the keys to his clandestine empire, and no one finds them quite like Elliot Caprice. With the FBI closing in on him, a monumental proffer: find her, and the Turk ends the conflict and leaves farm country.
With the end of The Short Paper War within reach, Elliot and his trusted Associate Frank Fuquay again take to the streets of Chicago to find the Most Valuable White Girl in organized crime before the FBI, the Chicago Outfit, and a serial killer preying on Negro-loving white women beat him to it. Someone's attacking snowflakes who love on Negro activists, which threatens to set the South side ablaze. Set in the wake of the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Ed., Elliot arrives in a rapidly evolving Chicago and is forced to confront his tragic past and save his hometown for good and all.
Talented Tenths, a Bronzeville Book Club exclusive, is the third novel of The Tales of Elliot Caprice and the conclusion of the first story arc, THE SHORT PAPER WAR. It is only available in boxed set editions and for subscribers, supporters, and affiliated booksellers and librarians belonging to SAY LESS READ MORE.
