On the run after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Private Investigator Smokey Dalton and Jimmy, the young boy he rescued, have settled under assumed names in Chicago. But history won't leave him alone. His job in security at the Chicago Hilton places him in the center of the protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Worse, a killer works his South Side neighborhood, killing children. The Chicago Police Department doesn't solve crimes in the South Side. Smokey can't ignore the crimes, any more than he can ignore the tension building in the city that hot August. He has to take action, before he loses everything. Chosen as one of the top ten mystery novels of the year by both Deadly Pleasures and Booklist, Smoke-Filled Rooms fulfills the promise of the award-winning Dangerous Road, and makes Smokey Dalton into one of the mystery field's most memorable detectives. "Nelscott does a superb job of using a familiar historical moment to dramatize an intimate human drama, as Smokey and Jimmy struggle to avoid becoming anonymous casualties lost behind the headlines. This series has all the passion and precision of Walter Mosley's early Easy Rawlins novels, but it is not derivative. In fact, Smokey just may be a more compelling character than the celebrated Easy." -Booklist starred review