Synopses & Reviews
He was white. She was beautiful and bad! Elmer Gantry had nothing on the Right Reverend Deuteronomy Springer, resident of the Anderson Hotel in Harlem, minister of the Church of God's Flock, late of Jox, Florida. Or was he really William Johnson, the man who'd checked into the hotel with a golden queen from some forgotten race in time named Merita? Merita was the wonderful color of real coffee, expensive, exotic coffee diluted with pure, thick, yellow cream. She was a goddess all right, a high priestess of love, sacred and profane. But this was how Sam Springer, the novelist from Miami, would have described her. He was the one who'd invented Mr. Willia Johnson, hadn't he? But Merita was no fantasy. She was for real.
Review
"No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford." Elmore Leonard
Review
"A bold book by a bold southerner!" Editors' Board of Review
Review
"Like all great genre fiction like the best of psychopulp staltwarts Jim Thompson, David Goodis, and Harry Whittington Willeford continually steered his work over the edge." Village Voice Literary supplement