Book Review: Cookie Cutter

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Cookie Cutter     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Sterling Anthony
Class/Genre:   Mystery
Ballantine Nov 1999, $24.00, 336 pp.

In Bent Fork, Alabama, black mortician Isaac Shaw knows he is in trouble when white teenager Annie Parsons informs him she is carrying his baby. Her father is a local power and the best Isaac can hope for is a lynching. She dies giving birth to his son and he hides her body where no one will ever find it. Isaac adopts the infant.

Three decades later, the Shaws are major players in the Motor City and Isaac is running for mayor. However, Isaac and Annie’s child has grown up with a mission to murder those individuals he believes are Oreos, black on the outside, but white on the inside. Detroit Homicide Lieutenant Mary Cunningham leads the efforts to capture the elusive serial killer.

Sterling Anthony’s first novel, an ethnic police procedural, is a very good tale that incorporates a family saga subplot that cleverly ties back to the main story line. Readers learn about a wide spectrum of black philosophy that ranges from Uncle Tom’s to moderates to radicals and separationists. The audience will sympathize with the villains even while knowing and abhorring the techniques employed by the killers. The various characterizations entwined inside a well-designed mystery make COOKIE CUTTER a unique choice that deserves reader attention.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner