Detective Barrett Raines Mysteries Series

Barrett Raines is a black detective on an isolated police force in Deacon Beach, a sweltering enclave on the Gulf Coast of northwestern Florida. Barrett's worked all his career to live up to the faith Romana Walker, Deacon Beach's eternal Homecoming Queen, showed in him when she pushed Barrett onto the all-white force in the face of local and bigoted opposition. Seven years later, Raines has made a place for himself and his schoolteacher wife in the hard-bitten community--to all appearances they are accepted. But affections can be fickle, as Barrett discovers when his despised elder brother, Delton Raines, becomes the chief suspect in the investigation of the brutal rape and murder of Ramona Walker. It's a no-win for Barrett. If he cannot find the much-loved Ramona's killer, locals will say he's shielding his brother. But if Barrett nails Delton for the crime, the detective's neighbors will say that he has used his badge to hang a brother he hates. There's a lynch mob brewing on The Beach, and the only way to calm the ugly waters is for Barrett to bring Ramona's killer to justice. There are a lot of things Barrett hates about this case. But what he hates most is that the only lead he has in the investigation comes form a prevaricating, hell-raising brother whom he has to trust.

The first appearance of Barrett Raines in A Rock and a Hard Place added an intelligent and extraordinarily engaging black policeman to the short roster of leading Afro-American fictional detectives. At the end of A Rock and a Hard Place, Raines is so torn by the conflicts he faced that he's gone into an emotional tailspin. While trying to save himself from depression Raines gets a new case. It involves the discovery of a mysterious stranger's body that strongly speaks of illicit dealings and Raines is pressed to follow a trail that takes him to an island so remote he can hardly find the way to it. There he encounters a situation that forces him to call upon his courage and his intelligence not only to solve the crime but to save his life.

On a chilly October morning, Barrett "Bear" Raines finds himself on the campground of Linton Loyd, one of the richest men in Florida, watching Linton clean his latest catch. Barrett does not understand why he, an African-American detective for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, has been invited to the rich man's playground, but soon discovers that Linton wants something from him: Linton wants Barrett to run for county sheriff and Linton will help sponsor the campaign. Barrett doesn't know what to make of the appealing offer and decides to think about it. The following week at work, Barrett learns of a case in which illegal immigrants are being forced to bale straw under rigged contracts and the department wants to find out just how wide spread the problem is. Barrett agrees to accompany Jarold Pearson, an old acquaintance and game warden, to the woods of Linton Loyd's straw baling company. However, the men find more than a group of scared migrant workers: in a secluded tin shack, they discover the body of a young woman pinned to the wall, almost as if she had been crucified. Based on evidence at the scene, Linton's only son becomes the prime suspect, but what does that do for Barrett's chance at sheriff? In a setting mysterious in itself, where an ancient woman could really be the witch people call her, Barrett faces horrible crime and a solution that continually changes shape, as elusive as the strange lights that flicker in his native swamps.

There is a Florida that has nothing to do with Disney World. Nothing to do with palm trees or Holiday Inns. Tourists are neither courted nor coddled in this Florida, and you can go a hundred miles and never find a golden arch. So says author Darryl Wimberley, and it's a Florida he knows. He knows, too, that in towns like Pepperfish Keys, there are those who still can't believe that a black man could rise to a high position in the state police. But Barrett Raines has done it; his father may have been a moneyless fisherman enriching his white employer, but things have changed---a bit. Sharon Fowler, a local television reporter, isn't concerned with Barrett's race---she wouldn't have cared if he were pink and green. She just wants to use him to get him (and, she hopes, the state's senator as well) into some kind of blazing trouble that will let her write a prize-wining story. Senator Baxter Stanton, of course, knows how important it is that the town's voters consider him "their man" in the upcoming election. There are activities he would like to stay hidden, and his young daughter, whom he can't harness, is having a fling with a man whom Barrett suspects is dealing with the senator in some kind of illegal business. But things happen that neither Barrett nor Sharon expected, throwing them into an unlikely alliance. The dead body of the senator's daughter is discovered behind a water heater in the senator's mansion. Can Raines pull the threads together---and find out what they mean? Set along the northwestern coast of Florida's Big Bend, Pepperfish Keys is an amazing addition to this riveting Florida Gulf noir series.

Special Agent Barrett "Bear" Raines of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has his Little League game interrupted when a returning GI uses Bear and the local sheriff to commit suicide-by-cop. Barrett agonizes over the young man's death. He knows that the young marine came home with a squad of other veterans who live outside the law near a place called Devil's Slew. Those GIs come under suspicion when federal authorities trace counterfeited currency to Bear's backyard. The feds believe that the counterfeiters are responsible for the kidnapping of a female agent off the streets of New Orleans. The threads connecting these local crimes stretch from northern Florida to Afghanistan and Mexico, and so, once again, Barrett Raines and the FDLE are called in to dodge the bullets and connect the dots. A superb storyteller, Darryl Wimberley writes about a Florida not many people know about, bringing to life its rich characters---and its lurking dangers.