Darryl Wimberley: Author of The King of Colored Town

Darryl Wimberley

Now Available: The King of Colored Town (The Toby Press)

"White blossoms to frame a black man. I straightened abruptly from the casket. Even in mortis Joe Billy seemed to threaten mobility. A laugh. A curse. Nobody could predict what Joseph William King would do in life. Nor even, apparently, in death."

There are good people and bad on both sides of the tracks that divide Laureate from 'Colored Town'. Our instruction in that hard truth comes as we follow two African-American teens, Cilla Handsom and Joe Billy King, as they endure the backlash resulting from the integration of their segregated school with the all-white school run by Lafayette County's all-white school board. The issue of the education of Laureate's children will expose hatreds on both sides of the color divide. Cilla will emerge from her ordeal carrying scars and grace to become a widely traveled classical musician. Joe Billy will be found hanging from the bars of his cell in a Florida penitentiary. Their moving, intertwined dramas put courage, cowardice, loyalty and betrayal side by side in an eloquent, evocative narrative where the demons and angels of a time and place are portrayed in black and white.

[STARRED REVIEW] "Wimberley paints complex characters against a backdrop of brutally violent racial oppression... Truly heartfelt storytelling." -Kirkus Reviews

"Wimberley revisits the rural north Florida featured in A Tinker's Damn in this powerful portrayal of a segregated community at the height of the Civil Rights movement... Wimberley's take on the prickly themes of racism and poverty is made memorable by a gripping story line, authentic voice and dead-on dialogue." -Publishers Weekly

Now Available: Pepperfish Keys, the fourth book in the Barrett Raines mystery series
Coming Soon: Pepperfish Keys audio book narrated by Dion Graham, who has appeared on "The Wire," "Law and Order" and many other TV shows and movies.

"There is a Florida that has nothing to do with Disney World. Nothing to do with palm trees or Holiday Inns. Tourists are neither courted nor coddled in this Florida, and you can go a hundred miles and never find a golden arch."

So says Darryl Wimberley, and it's a Florida he knows. He knows, too, that in towns like Pepperfish Keys, there are those who still can't believe that a black man could rise to a high position in the state police. But Barrett Raines has done it; his father may have been a moneyless fisherman enriching his white employer, but things have changed—a bit.

Sharon Fowler, a local television reporter, isn't concerned with Barrett's race—she wouldn't have cared if he were pink and green. She just wants to use him to get him (and, she hopes, the state's senator as well) into some kind of blazing trouble that will let her write a prize-wining story.

Senator Baxter Stanton, of course, knows how important it is that the town's voters consider him "their man" in the upcoming election. There are activities he would like to stay hidden, and his young daughter, whom he can't harness, is having a fling with a man whom Barrett suspects is dealing with the senator in some kind of illegal business.

But things happen that neither Barrett nor Sharon expected, throwing them into an unlikely alliance. The dead body of the senator's daughter is discovered behind a water heater in the senator's mansion. Can Raines pull the threads together—and find out what they mean?

Set along the northwestern coast of Florida's Big Bend, Pepperfish Keys is an amazing addition to this riveting Florida Gulf noir series.

"Wimberley is a top-notch writer with command of both his plot and the northwestern Florida coastal setting." -Publishers Weekly

[STARRED REVIEW] "The fourth 'Bear' Raines case ranges from Florida to Los Angeles, and its melodious prose brings the same sense of paradise lost to northwest Florida that James Lee Burke evokes in his Louisiana-set Dave Robicheaux novels. Raines is indeed a bear, both in carriage and in ferocious determination... If not now, then very soon, Raines should join Robicheaux, John Sanford's Lucas Davenport, and Robert B. Parker's Spenser at the hard-boiled-hero head table." -Booklist

Purchase Darryl Wimberley's books at your local independent bookstore, Powells.com, amazon.com or bn.com.