Dirty Laundry

by Paula L. Woods

Book Overview

In her award-winning Charlotte Justice novels, Paula L. Woods has created a rare blend of mystery, suspense, and an unflinching social critique of urban, multiethnic America. Featuring an African... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345457005
• ISBN13: 9780345457004
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: One World
• Length: 284 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Those Who Live in Glass Houses Should Not Have Dirty Laundry

Paula Woods has brought back the sharp-edged, tough-talking detective, Charlotte Justice, in her latest mystery, Dirty Laundry. As always, readers can expect a supporting cast of a diverse group of detectives from all walks and cultures of the greater Los Angeles area on duty, getting the job done and putting their own twist on the murder case involved. When Vicki Park, a Korean-American woman is found dead behind a Laundromat it becomes symbolic of the dirty laundry that is thrown around throughout the novel. The murder is immediately counted as a celebrity murder as Vicki is an assistant to the Latino candidate for mayor, Mike Santos, a charismatic guy, who has some dirty laundry of his own. This is a year after the Rodney King riots in 1992 and relationships between Koreans and the Black and Latino residents of the neighborhoods where they have businesses are tenuous, to say the least. They also feel they have not been supported by the police department and the city, in general. Charlotte is at the best place in her life as she approaches her fortieth birthday-in fact she has never been better. After the devastating, violent deaths of her husband and baby daughter fourteen years prior, she has finally found happiness with a great man, Aubrey and has made peace with her manipulative mother, who is a snob. In fact, Charlotte calls the family home where her upper-class African American family congregates, the Nut House. As a detective in the highly regarded Homicide and Robbery division, she has gone through more than her share of drama in the department. She comes into the Park murder after a particularly rough year when she brought accusations against her former superior while she was required to appear before a police commission for questionable conduct while on duty. It is known nationally that the Los Angeles Police Department has their share of problems with countless cases of victims' abuse and corruption amongst their personnel. Woods does an effective job of demonstrating the nuances of a city under a microscope without over dramatizing the details or pointing fingers at any one issue or group. Additionally, this author does an excellent job, as in her previous novels, of giving readers a view of Los Angeles (also her home) history interwoven throughout the narrative. When Woods was here in Oakland for her book signing, she said she wanted to weave a multicultural tale that would depict the diversity of the city. In doing so she also manages to create realistic three-dimensional African American characters from different walks of life. Her characters, including the protagonist, are flawed and Woods delves deep into the psyche of these people as if they are real people. The first fifty or so pages moved a little slowly but picked up momentum and made for an evenly-paced, satisfying read. I look forward to meeting up with Detective Charlotte Justice in her next assignment.Dera WilliamsAPOOO BookClub

A Gritty, Haunting and Intriguing Work

Police work involves quite a bit more than fighting crime. There is, and always has been, a political and cultural element to it, as well as the tide of different ethnicities that ebb and flow into and out of a city. This is hardly a recent development; Irish police resented the influx of Italian officers into the New York City and Chicago police ranks during and after the turn of the 20th century; the New Orleans Police Department for years roiled with the uneasy mixing of Italian and French South Louisiana officers, who in turn, had to adjust to the inevitable but overdue influx of black officers into the ranks.The race of the officers is not the only factor that affects a police department, however. Nor is the size of the city the department patrols. There is a municipality within spitting distance of my residency that has made national headlines by virtue of the fact that it exists solely to support its police department, which writes traffic tickets by the handful, in order to support its police department, which writes traffic tickets by the handful, in order to...well, you get the idea.Most police procedural novels lead the reader painstakingly through the evidence-gathering process, and while they may touch on the internal and external politics of the department, that touch is light and almost incidental. That is not the case with the Charlotte Justice novels.Justice is a black homicide detective in the LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division. Her creator, Charlotte Woods, has carved out a series in which Justice and her supporting characters are constantly evolving, making mistakes, paying for them, and moving on. The crimes that are investigated usually take place off the page, though the violence that is transmitted through the crime scene description to the reader is certainly graphic enough. Woods's major accomplishment, however, is to nicely balance her description of the crime-solving procedure against the backdrop of the political and social factors that affect how, and in some cases whether, the crime is investigated and the wrongdoer apprehended.DIRTY LAUNDRY, the latest of Woods's Charlotte Justice novels, begins with the grisly discovery of a murder in a transient area of Koreatown. The victim is quickly determined to be Vicki Park, an up-and-coming political assistant to mayoral candidate Mike Santos. There is no lack of suspects, from Park's fiancée to members of Santos's campaign staff to, surprisingly enough, members of the Los Angeles Police Department. Park, it seems, was a bit of a maverick, a Korean working on the campaign of a Hispanic mayoral candidate and, as it turns out, did not approve of some of his campaign tactics. Yet, there were other mayoral candidates who also did not approve of his work.Justice finds that her investigation is hamstrung by opportunists in the police department, political realities (she can investigate candidates, but not too closely) and even, to some extent, her personal life. It is almost a foreg

Paula Woods is Graphic! Gritty! and GREAT!

With the city still reeling from the aftershock of the Rodney King riots, the mean streets of Los Angeles have gotten a lot meaner and more treacherous as African-American detective Charlotte Justice of the LAPD's elite Robbery-Homicide division returns to active duty after serving out a four-month suspension following a previous investigation which had ended tragically. Three weeks away from a potentially explosive...multi-candidate...mayoral primary, LA is a powder keg of racial/political tensions that's ready to blow at the slightest provocation. When Charlotte and her new partners, black lesbian Billie Truesdale and white 'newbie-Tec' Roger Middleton, catch their first case as a team (the cold-blooded killing of a politically-well-connected Korean-American woman whose dead body has been found bound, gagged and dumped in a Koreatown alley), it could well prove to be the high-profile spark that will destroy LAPD's last remaing shreds of credibility and set the city ablaze. Savvy, stunning Vicki Park had been working as a campaign strategist for charismatic, former news-anchor Mike Santos who is running hard and well-ahead of the pack in his campaign to become LA's first Mexican-American mayor. Apparently dissatisfied with the role which she's being asked to play in his race, has Vicki's discontent caused her murder? Charlotte's investigation becomes further complicated by another death...that of a Korean detective who has been serving as her link with the community: was it an accident or was he set up? and she needs every bit of her hard-won street smarts, detective skills and self-control to work her way through a maze of false clues, misleading information and an old-boys' Department network that would like nothing better than to see her lose her badge permanently. Inevitably, as she starts to zero in on the how's and why's of Vicki's murder, the stakes rise, and the final confrontation between Charlotte and a traitorous killer/cop had me glued to the pages until I could safely breathe again.That's actually the best criteria that I have to praise Paula L. Woods as a fresh, unique and utterly absorbing new voice on the police procedural scene! This lady can WRITE! I came to Charlotte Justice cold, and was excited to the point where I stopped reading after only a couple of chapters (hard to do!) in order to seek out her two previous adventures first. Yes, this novel will absolutely stand-alone, but I quickly realized that if I really wanted to be able to savor its nuances...especially those having to do with the black community: its family values and focus which are so integral to Ms. Woods' plotting...obtaining additional background material from "Inner City Blues" and "Stormy Weather" could and did make an enormous difference in my enjoyment of "Dirty Laundry". I was especially enthralled and impressed by Ms. Woods' 'take' on Chalotte's experiences in dealing with the barbed-wire, racist/sexist climate in LAPD. This novel rang with

An excellent police procedural

Eleven months after the Rodney King Riots, Los Angeles remains fragmented along racial lines and the LAPD is still reeling from the fact that four of their own are going to be on trial. Some members of the community are trying to heal the troubled city by campaigning for the mayoral candidate that they believe will work to unite the racially divided city. Korean-American Vicki Park believes that Latino candidate Mike Santos is the person for the job and works as a campaign strategist on his election team until someone kills her.African-American LAPD homicide detective Charlotte Justice, a black woman who can pass for white, knows how racially and sexually prejudiced the department is against blacks and women. She is assigned to find out who killed Vicki Park and dumped her burned body in a back alley in Koreantown. Aware of what a political hot potato she is dealing with and just coming off a suspension because she killed a dirty cop, Charlotte must once again deal with dirty police officers and multiple suspects who had ample reason to want the victim dead.In March 1993, Los Angeles is a city in pain especially the Korean community who lost some loved ones and much of their local shops due to rioters. The police department is still run by the white good old boys, leaving minorities and women losing the fight against an entrenched system that has been in place for decades. DIRTY LAUNDRY is an excellent police procedural that gives a step by step play of a homicide investigation against one heck of a realistic backdrop.Harriet Klausner

It'll All Come Out in the Wash

Paula L. Woods comes back onto the sleuth scene in her third Charlotte Justice tale, DIRTY LAUNDRY. This time, our fearless diva is back on the job after an administrative leave, and ready to roll some heads. After taking on the title of supervisor, Justice is assigned to a case involving a dead Korean girl whose body was found in an alley. The vic, Vicki Park, was a member of the campaign team for the Latino mayorial candidate, Mike Santos. Something stinks in the events leading up to Park's demise, and Charlotte and Billie Truesdale are on it like white on rice. In DIRTY LAUNDRY, not only is the Park case part of the plot, but Charlotte's own life transgressions and dirty laundry come out in the open. She is forced to confront feelings about her family, her career, her fiancee Aubrey, and the passing of her husband and daughter years earlier. A novel about secrets, lies, and letting go, DIRTY LAUNDRY won't disappoint followers of Justice. Woods' prose is tight and, once again, Charlotte was allowed into my heart. Another page turner from this talented mystery writer, DIRTY LAUNDRY is an especially symbolic read for those who know that "digging up dirt will just get you dirty," but it'll all come out in the wash. Reviewed by CandaceKThe RAWSISTAZ Reviewers