Grant Bywaters

Grant Bywaters is the author of The Red Storm. From his Q & A at Sons of Spade:

Q: What makes your William Fletcher different from other hardboiled  characters?

Fletcher is a black man trying to make a living as a private detective in the late 1930s New Orleans. Unlike your conventional detective of that time period, Fletcher has to navigate through segregation laws and racial tensions which make his job more difficult. Fletcher also carries a deep bitterness from not getting a chance at fighting for the heavyweight title in his youth which was due to the color line being drawn after the country’s call for a Great White Hope to defeat the first black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson were answered. Fletcher was one of many great black heavyweights during this period that never got a chance to fight for the title for decades until Joe Louis came around.

Q: How did you come up with the character?

During the time I was getting my private investigator license, I was also working on my Associate’s Degree. I was taking an African American history class and the two things going on in my life kind of blended together. I got to thinking how...[read on]

Learn more about The Red Storm at the publisher's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Red Storm.

My Book, The Movie: The Red Storm.

--Marshal Zeringue