Sassafras Winters is a retired Chicago Cubs baseball pitcher trying to start a new career as a private detective.

The year is 1936, the Depression is in full swing, and Sas appears to be striking out as a shamus—until an old friend telephones to ask if Sas can come to New York. It seems this friend knows a director named Orson Welles who can use a bodyguard.

Welles, 20 years old and full of beans, is in Harlem directing an all-Negro Macbeth (or what the locals call the Voodoo Macbeth) for the WPA’s Federal Theater Project. The Harlem Chapter of the Communist Party, however, believes Welles is brewing up a minstrel Shakespeare and is determined to turn the borough against the production. Welles denies the allegations, but so far his arguments have been drowned out by the beating of voodoo drums and the bleat of sacrificial goats wafting out of his playhouse, Harlem’s famous Lafayette Theater.

Welles is receiving ten death threats a day when Winters signs on as the wunderkind’s protector. That number will likely go up after one of Welles’ actors, Ben Kanter, is arrested on suspicion of murdering a white socialite, Norton Denbrough, who has been seen stepping out with Kanter’s girlfriend, Rose Ramsey, Macbeth’s Lady-in-Waiting.

Kanter insists he is innocent. Many angry Harlemites believe Kanter is being framed. If the actor’s innocence or guilt cannot be proven…and fast…a very nasty storm could break out in Harlem. A storm with the Lafayette at its epicenter.

That job falls to Sas.

"You wanted to be a detective," Welles reminds Sas. "Remember?"

Sas does have some help, though: Chinaman, his valet (Yes, "valet"), who seems to know everything and seems always to have been at the right place at the right time.

Together the baseball player and his manservant will take you on an incredible, delirious, and dangerous tour of Harlem in its heyday. They will introduce you to the likes of Welles’ producer John Houseman, actors such as Jack Carter and Miss Edna Thompson, eccentrics like Father Divine (the self-proclaimed second coming of Jesus Christ), and celebrities such as Langston Hughes, Carl Van Vechten, and other illustrious members of the Harlem Renaissance.

Join the mystery-adventure genre’s newest detective team as Sassafras Winters and Chinaman solve their first case. King of Harlem is the sort of adventure that only Orson Welles could dream up, or find himself in the middle of.

MORE ON THE KING OF HARLEM

Press Kit on King of Harlem

"The Play That Electrified Harlem"

King of Harlem Trivia

To Order King of Harlem

Excerpt from King of Harlem

"The Curse of Wrigley Field"
an original Sassafras Winters/Chinaman Short Story

You can order a copy at www.mundania.com, at any Barnes 
and Noble Booksellers and most retail outlets, as well as at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.