THE ACCOMPLICE

Desmond Bell, a traumatized Black Vietnam veteran turned professional thief, runs afoul of a powerful Texas family after acquiring proof that it profited from the trans-Atlantic slave trade in this novel by Jackson, aka rapper 50 Cent.

Bell has in his possession a damning slave manifesto, which he lifted along with $2 million in Spanish gold from a hidden safe in an old bank in Waxahachie. His blackmail demands are that the right-wing, oil-rich white Duchamp family pay him $5 million for the document—and cancel shifty son Corbin’s run for president. That puts Bell in the crosshairs of Katz, a nihilistic killer working for the family. Enter Nia Adams, the first Black female Texas Ranger, who has to contend with not only Katz and company but also the underlying bigotry around her. Everyone has secrets. Nia is a closeted lesbian in a long relationship. Bell’s real name is Al Bouchard, which he changed after black-market dealings in Vietnam made him a marked man. After his Vietnamese wife was killed in a car crash that was meant to kill him, he faked his death and that of his daughter, Amara, who also survived the crash, and escaped to the U.S. as Desmond Bell. There, his “atomic” anger and remorse drive him to coldblooded acts of violence that cost him an ally in Nia. Written with the excellent crime fiction veteran Clark, Jackson’s first work of adult fiction is an assured, classically rendered effort. Though the twisty ending is wobbly and the novel lacks the depth of Southern gothics by Attica Locke and S.A. Cosby, it has its own special qualities—including a soundtrack in which patriotic Vietnamese hymns get swapped on a karaoke machine for the author’s “P.I.M.P.”

A satisfying thriller that knows its way around the form.