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Jackson Park
From the acclaimed author of the Nanette Hayes mystery novels comes a thrilling new series featuring an unforgettable trio of sleuths. By turns gritty and gracefully written, Jackson Park is a compelling novel of noir suspense—a fast-paced page-turner that is also a glimpse inside Black life in Chicago during a pivotal moment in American history.
It is the Spring of 1968. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the city of Chicago is a powder keg ready to explode. Against this tense backdrop, there is Woodson and Ivy Lisle, an elegant couple living in a shabby chic apartment hotel in Cook County’s Hyde Park. Both are proud patriarchs of a large, extended family, which includes their twenty-year-old grandniece, Cassandra, a college student standing at the crossroads— and on the brink of a troubling mystery involving the missing granddaughter of an old family friend.
Fearing for the girl’s safety, Woody, Ivy, and Cassandra begin a determined investigation. What they uncover is a chilling link to an old murder case. Now a shattering secret of the past threatens all who try to expose it.
It is the Spring of 1968. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the city of Chicago is a powder keg ready to explode. Against this tense backdrop, there is Woodson and Ivy Lisle, an elegant couple living in a shabby chic apartment hotel in Cook County’s Hyde Park. Both are proud patriarchs of a large, extended family, which includes their twenty-year-old grandniece, Cassandra, a college student standing at the crossroads— and on the brink of a troubling mystery involving the missing granddaughter of an old family friend.
Fearing for the girl’s safety, Woody, Ivy, and Cassandra begin a determined investigation. What they uncover is a chilling link to an old murder case. Now a shattering secret of the past threatens all who try to expose it.
213 pages, Paperback
First published July 29, 2003
60 people want to read
About the author
Charlotte Carter
9 books73 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Charlotte Carter is the author of an acclaimed mystery series featuring Nanette Hayes, a young black American jazz musician with a lust for life and a talent for crime solving. Coq au Vin, the second book in the series, has been optioned for the movies. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of American and British anthologies, including John Harvey's Blue Lightning. The first in a new series set in Chicago against the tumultuous backdrop of the 1960s will be published in late 2002 - early 2003. Charlotte Carter has lived in the American Midwest, North Africa and France. She currently resides in NYC with her husband.
Charlotte Carter is the author of an acclaimed mystery series featuring Nanette Hayes, a young black American jazz musician with a lust for life and a talent for crime solving. Coq au Vin, the second book in the series, has been optioned for the movies. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of American and British anthologies, including John Harvey's Blue Lightning. The first in a new series set in Chicago against the tumultuous backdrop of the 1960s will be published in late 2002 - early 2003. Charlotte Carter has lived in the American Midwest, North Africa and France. She currently resides in NYC with her husband.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 16, 2025
JACKSON PARK is a somewhat gritty historical mystery set in 1968 Chicago with an awkward but funny protagonist, Cassandra, whose pulled into finding a missing teenager with her great aunt and uncle. I didn't expect this to be an intergenerational multi-sleuth story although Great Aunt Ivy has less of a role, this is mostly the Cass and Woody show and their interactions were very sweet. The ominous cover should have clued me in along with the missing teenager premise but there's also an old murder case that I found disturbing. Aside from the relationship between to the primary characters, this novel is strongest when discussing the art, politics, and racial dynamics of Chicago during this time. Artists are casually mentioned with nary an explanatory comma while Carter easily conveys the appalling conduct of the first Mayor Daley without breaking from the pace of the story. She also aptly weaves in campus protests, police corruption, a local Black militant group and the women's liberation movement. There's also meatier issues at play, class tension is present throughout the novel since her family is solidly middle class (or perhaps upper middle class it wasn't completely clear to me) and many of her childhood peers and college classmates are not. The book being set shortly after the assassination of MLK Jr and its exploration of protests and FBI surveillance during this time lead Cass to consider the utility of violence when used to achieve a cause or protect someone.
Unfortunately this novel has too many characters for its short length, or at least Carter needed to be a tighter writer, I finished the story having no idea who the murderer was even though it's handed to our sleuths on a silver platter. We're told his name and his connection to other characters but I couldn't remember who any of them were because we barely spent significant time with anyone except Cass' family and Hero, her uncle's sort of right hand man. I can appreciate wanting to keep a story moving but we needed to spend a bit more page time with characters or have greater characterization conveyed in its sparse sentences. I'm still planning to read the next book in the series as well as the Nanette Hayes because Carter's oeuvre intrigues me but this book definitely isn't for everyone, stylistically I'd give it a 2.5 but rounding up due to personal enjoyment.
Unfortunately this novel has too many characters for its short length, or at least Carter needed to be a tighter writer, I finished the story having no idea who the murderer was even though it's handed to our sleuths on a silver platter. We're told his name and his connection to other characters but I couldn't remember who any of them were because we barely spent significant time with anyone except Cass' family and Hero, her uncle's sort of right hand man. I can appreciate wanting to keep a story moving but we needed to spend a bit more page time with characters or have greater characterization conveyed in its sparse sentences. I'm still planning to read the next book in the series as well as the Nanette Hayes because Carter's oeuvre intrigues me but this book definitely isn't for everyone, stylistically I'd give it a 2.5 but rounding up due to personal enjoyment.
May 12, 2010
Setting and characterization overshadow the mystery in Carter's (Walking Bones) entertaining if conventional whodunit, the first in a new series. In the days following the domestic unrest triggered by Martin Luther King's assassination in April 1968, Cassandra, an English major at a small Chicago college, finds her life disrupted by more than political turmoil.
Cassandra joins her great-uncle and great-aunt, the people who reared her, in helping a neighbor locate his teenage granddaughter, last seen entering what may have been a police car. The missing girl's checkered past, including service in a brothel, may hold the key, but other clues point to a local branch of the Black Panthers as well as to the vicious sex murder of a white teacher nearly a decade before. While some crime fans won't go for the minimal detection and a solution literally handed to Cassandra and her relatives in a letter, other readers will appreciate the author's incisive portrait of a black family's struggle with racism, powerlessness and their individual responsibilities to society.
It is just one week after the killing of Martin Luther King Jr., and the black community on Chicago's South Side continues to grieve. For 20-year-old Cassandra Lisle, abandoned as a child by both her parents, it is a time of transition; she is pulled in one direction by her great-aunt and -uncle, Ivy and Woody, who share their comfortable home in Hyde Park with Cassandra, and in another by her radical college friends. When an acquaintance from the family's old neighborhood in Jackson Park asks for help in finding his missing granddaughter, Woody, Ivy, and Cassandra oblige, opening both old and new wounds in the process.
Carter, also author of the Nanette Hayes series, has a real talent for using city streets to help tell her stories. Just as New York and Paris become main characters in the Hayes books, so Chicago's South Side--its despair, its energy, and its sense of community--provides this novel with both a setting and a sense of the characters' inner lives. A natural for fans of Kris Nelscott's Smokey Dalton series
Cassandra joins her great-uncle and great-aunt, the people who reared her, in helping a neighbor locate his teenage granddaughter, last seen entering what may have been a police car. The missing girl's checkered past, including service in a brothel, may hold the key, but other clues point to a local branch of the Black Panthers as well as to the vicious sex murder of a white teacher nearly a decade before. While some crime fans won't go for the minimal detection and a solution literally handed to Cassandra and her relatives in a letter, other readers will appreciate the author's incisive portrait of a black family's struggle with racism, powerlessness and their individual responsibilities to society.
It is just one week after the killing of Martin Luther King Jr., and the black community on Chicago's South Side continues to grieve. For 20-year-old Cassandra Lisle, abandoned as a child by both her parents, it is a time of transition; she is pulled in one direction by her great-aunt and -uncle, Ivy and Woody, who share their comfortable home in Hyde Park with Cassandra, and in another by her radical college friends. When an acquaintance from the family's old neighborhood in Jackson Park asks for help in finding his missing granddaughter, Woody, Ivy, and Cassandra oblige, opening both old and new wounds in the process.
Carter, also author of the Nanette Hayes series, has a real talent for using city streets to help tell her stories. Just as New York and Paris become main characters in the Hayes books, so Chicago's South Side--its despair, its energy, and its sense of community--provides this novel with both a setting and a sense of the characters' inner lives. A natural for fans of Kris Nelscott's Smokey Dalton series
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 20, 2009
Charlotte Carters mystery, Jackson Park, occurs in the midst of Chicago in the aftermath of the MLK assassination where Black people are still angry and disillusioned, politicians are very nervous, and the city is still smoldering from the riots. Carters unlikely shero is Cassandra, a college coed; a witty, hippi-ish misfit who is raised by her great-aunt and uncle. Despite the volatile atmosphere, she clings to optimism and hope so when a request to assist a family friend presents itself, she jumps at the opportunity to help.
Danger befalls Cassandra and her family as the seemingly harmless appeal to find a missing girl leads to a decades old murder of a white schoolteacher by a black mentally challenged boy. While on this adventure, she discovers the boy was wrongly accused, learns of her uncles shady past, and matures on many levels. We follow a trail that leads to a Black vigilante group (The Roots), dirty politicians, police brutality/corruption and are reminded that as much things change, some things remain the same.
I enjoyed the way in which Carter intermingled the old with the new throughout the novel. She paired the young, idealistic, energetic Black youth with the older, cautious, realistic generation to teach the lessons of discretion and patience. Through Cassandras eyes and ears, we heard the music of Marvin and Aretha; we saw glimpses of war protesters, civil rights activists, and the emerging womens liberation movement. In as much as this was a walk down memory lane, it was an amusing and suspenseful story that was entertaining and easy to read.
Danger befalls Cassandra and her family as the seemingly harmless appeal to find a missing girl leads to a decades old murder of a white schoolteacher by a black mentally challenged boy. While on this adventure, she discovers the boy was wrongly accused, learns of her uncles shady past, and matures on many levels. We follow a trail that leads to a Black vigilante group (The Roots), dirty politicians, police brutality/corruption and are reminded that as much things change, some things remain the same.
I enjoyed the way in which Carter intermingled the old with the new throughout the novel. She paired the young, idealistic, energetic Black youth with the older, cautious, realistic generation to teach the lessons of discretion and patience. Through Cassandras eyes and ears, we heard the music of Marvin and Aretha; we saw glimpses of war protesters, civil rights activists, and the emerging womens liberation movement. In as much as this was a walk down memory lane, it was an amusing and suspenseful story that was entertaining and easy to read.
April 13, 2013
Just after Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated, Cassandra, an African-American college student (somewhat at loose ends after the assassination), makes it her business to track down the missing relative of some family friends. Lavelle Jackson was last seen entering a police car, and it’s widely thought that something bad has happened to her. As Cassandra makes the rounds with her great uncle, Woodson (Woody), interrogating possible suspects and others who might have seen/had contact with Lavelle, readers get to see the seedy underbelly of Chicago’s south side through the disreputable characters Carter has created.
This mystery has a strong sense of place and time, but I didn’t connect with the characters. Lavelle was bound for trouble, and most of the people with who she associated were also in a bad way. People were rude, cruel, mean, even threatening, and unhelpful at the very least as Woody and Cassandra carry out their investigation. The revelation – when it comes – is hardly shocking. Perhaps this would have been more suspenseful if I’d read the print edition, instead of listening to the audio? Rather dark and depressing, despite a successful wrap-up of their first case.
This mystery has a strong sense of place and time, but I didn’t connect with the characters. Lavelle was bound for trouble, and most of the people with who she associated were also in a bad way. People were rude, cruel, mean, even threatening, and unhelpful at the very least as Woody and Cassandra carry out their investigation. The revelation – when it comes – is hardly shocking. Perhaps this would have been more suspenseful if I’d read the print edition, instead of listening to the audio? Rather dark and depressing, despite a successful wrap-up of their first case.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 24, 2010
Set in Chicago after the Martin Luther King assassination...after the subsequent riots...the story features a Black family (of sorts..by necessity) caught up in a series of events born in the old Chicago political system and reared in the Black Power movement of the late 1960s. How these pieces fall together..and some lives fall apart...makes a good "mystery" but a better mini-History lesson writ bloody but not screamingly LARGE.
Ms Carter also wrote the NANETTE HAYES Trilogy:
Rhode Island RedRhode Island Red,Coq Au Vin, &Drumsticks....all three sexy, sassy, and real (do i detect a Chicken theme?) Funky Butt chic, to be sure! Go, seek them out...
Ms Carter also wrote the NANETTE HAYES Trilogy:
Rhode Island RedRhode Island Red,Coq Au Vin, &Drumsticks....all three sexy, sassy, and real (do i detect a Chicken theme?) Funky Butt chic, to be sure! Go, seek them out...
January 13, 2011
In general, I'm looking for the sense of setting in a novel, both in time and place. This novel, set in Chicago in April 1968 (just following Dr. King's murder and the riots that followed it), was clearly set in Chicago (the geography of the streets ran true), but I didn't really get a sense of place. And the sense of that time was largely lost in the novel -- other than occasional references to the killing of Dr. King and the riot, this could have taken place in Chicago's North Side in the mid-eighties.
It did make me wonder though -- to what extent were groups of blacks excluded by other blacks because they had not adopted a revolutionary pose?
It did make me wonder though -- to what extent were groups of blacks excluded by other blacks because they had not adopted a revolutionary pose?
December 12, 2008
This book provided insight into a time and culture that outsiders could never fully understand. It takes place in the 1950's, in Chicago's roughest crime neighborhoods and traces the lives of struggling African American families. I truly enjoyed this book...it was definitely an eye-opener about this different world.
October 18, 2011
a good mystery
August 28, 2016
Interesting story about black college student in Chicago in 1960s, a neighborhood murder and intersection with the black panthers.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews