Too Dark City, a neo-noir novel, set in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1948, features a black detective, Moses Webb, and his side kick, Harry Martensen, a radioman and photographer. The Shakespeare Company manufactures fishing tackle and grew to employ over 600 workers after World War II.

Most of the employees wanted to be represented by a union. Eventually, the workers walked out on strike, and four months later, a riot ensued.

As a detective with the Kalamazoo Police, Moses Webb was shot in the left arm and shoulder during a drugstore robbery, forcing him to resign from the force. Now divorced, Moses works as a second-shift auto mechanic.

As a favor, he investigates Marvin Simmons, a teenage basketball phenom. The police and prosecuting attorney have written the boy off as a Northside delinquent.

Moses and his friend, Harry Martensen, an Air Force reservist radioman and amateur photographer, work through a list of suspects connected to the Shakespeare riot, the Red Scare, drug dealers, and red-line establishment politicians. One by one, the suspects Moses and Harry investigate, turn up missing or dead.

Further complicating the case, Moses falls for Marvin’s mother who is a nurse and has the best-looking legs on the north side of Kalamazoo. .