The Long Mile [Paperback]

Desperation and hope fuel Ford's angry narrative concerning a wrongly convicted black detective, but no amount of action and bloodshed can make up for an overly familiar plot. After serving two years of a sentence for a murder he didn't commit, former NYPD detective John Shannon is let loose on appeal only to find that his 14-year-old son has been kidnapped. What happens next is thoroughly predictable, including plenty of gunplay and some dubious prison philosophy courtesy of Shannon's cellmate Charles Promise. The reader waits in vain for some innovation, some new twist we haven't encountered before amid the unrelievedly downbeat depiction of the underworld and its denizens. Alas, we've walked this long mile too many times before. Ford is also the author of the well-received study The Hero with an African Face: Mythic Wisdom of Traditional Africa.
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Framed for the murder of DEA agent Danny Rodrigues during a drug bust, former New York City police detective John Shannon is released after serving two years in prison. Innocence Watch lawyer Nora Matthews helped free Shannon after finding irregularities in the government's case against him. Shannon is determined to put his life back together with his wife and son and find the person who really murdered Rodrigues. Barely out of prison, Shannon is offered a choice by the ex-CIA agent who runs New York's Office of Municipal Security: take a job with the agency or face rearrest and a retrial for murder. Angrily turning down the job, Shannon soon learns that his son, J. J., is missing. Against the advice of his lawyer, he breaks the conditions of his release and races to find his son and clear his name before the government closes in on him. This fast-paced thriller grabs readers and holds them to the end. Sue O'Brien
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

?. . . this gritty, hard-boiled debut is a good choice for most mystery and African American fiction collections especially where Walter Mosley is popular. ? -- Library Journal "Library Journal"

Winner of the 2006 Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) for Best Mystery/Suspense/Thriller! This gritty detective thriller, set in New York City, relates one African-American man's riveting quest for truth and redemption.Framed for murder during a failed drug bust, former NYPD officer John Shannon spends two years in jail before his release on appeal. Eager to find the true killer and clear his name, he enjoys two scant minutes of freedom before being brutally arrested, knocked unconscious, and whisked away to the Office of Municipal Security, run by a former CIA director. Refusing their job offer, Shannon heads home to make amends with his estranged wife and discovers terrifying news: his teenage son J. J., who has become mixed up with a drug gang, has been kidnapped. Shannon's desperate search for J. J. is complicated by a new warrant for his arrest, the mysterious murder of his former partner, and Shannon's personal struggle with anger, violence, and justice.Written in the tradition of Raymond Chandler and Walter Mosley, this is the first in a series of thrillers featuring the compelling character of John Shannon. Click here to download Book Club Questions for The Long Mile, prepared by author Clyde W. Ford!

Clyde Ford is the author of the acclaimed work of non-fiction The Hero with an African Face (Bantam), We Can All Get Along (Dell), and the new mystery novels Red Herring and the forthcoming Precious Cargo (Mystic Voyager Books). He has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, National Public Radio, and has been featured in The Seattle Times and 150 other radio and television programs across the country. The second of Fords Shango Mystery series, Deuce's Wild is scheduled for a Spring 2006 release.A native New Yorker, Ford is a noted mythologist, psychologist, and scholar who has taught at Columbia and Western Washington University. Founder of the Institute of African Mythology, the author currently lives near Seattle where he enjoys writing, sea-kayaking and cruising the waters of the Pacific Northwest in his single-engine trawler Mystic Voyager.

one

Two years later

"We're all prisoners of our minds."

Charles Promise liked to let the words hang in the air before he continued. "Doesn't matter which side of these cell bars you're on. The bars don't imprison you, your thoughts and feelings do. The bars won't set you free either, only your thoughts and feelings will. Someday you'll leave here. But when that day comes, will you step out of prison a free man?"

With a nerve-grating scrape of metal on metal, my cell door sliced open. I sat on the edge of my bunk mesmerized, unable to move, pondering Promise's words. After two years in prison, I was being set free. I was anxious to reclaim my life, yet from the pit of my stomach a hot swell of anger rose. I swallowed hard to keep it down. I'd served this time for murdering Danny Rodrigues. Now thanks to a smart lawyer I was temporarily free. I wanted to avenge Danny's murder and I wanted to vindicate myself, but I feared that this firestorm of anger would consume me first.

"Time, Shannon," a guard called out. He strummed the bars with his nightstick, beating out a one-note metallic dirge that ricocheted off the cellblock walls.

I stepped out of my cell. I nodded to the guard and then walked along slowly as he trailed me. We call this "walking the long mile." It's a term of honor, reserved for inmates taking their last steps down Death Row or their first steps toward freedom. A familiar musty smell hung in the air. Under my feet, the concrete felt hard and unforgiving. I walked past men standing silently in their cells. Our gazes met. Their eyes were fixed straight ahead, unflinching, an inmate's salute of defiance and respect.

I once worked as a NYPD detective. I never thought that I would earn the respect of convicted criminals, nor they mine. Now after two years in prison, I believe I knew why these men stood silently for me this morning. They saluted not the crimes for which we were convicted but the spirit within each of us that allowed us to survive in here day after day.

I slowed my pace and leaned over the railing for one last look down at the concrete floor four flights below. In my two years here, six men had taken this plunge. Some were pushed. Others jumped willingly. It's said that in the split seconds before hitting the floor, one has an unimaginable feeling of freedom.

"Move on, Shannon," the guard behind me growled, jabbing his nightstick into my back.

I stumbled forward but stopped at "the penthouse." I didn't care about the guard, or his nightstick. Neither could keep me from saying goodbye to my friend, Charles Promise. I reached through the cell bars and clasped Promise's hand. Our thumbs locked. Beneath his sagging flesh, I felt his bones.

"Thanks," I said.

"Wasn't nothing, John," he replied, looking me in the eyes, searching, not saluting.

Then his gaze softened. I let mine do the same. Promise and I stared at each other with our hands clasped. My palm grew warm.

In his early seventies, Promise's dark-brown skin was wrinkled, drawn at the corners of his eyes and lips. His light gray hair bordered on white. He had a prominent nose and deep, penetrating eyes. A serene smile always seemed to grace his lips.

Behind Promise, a thin blue light painted the early morning view from his barred window. On each level, the inmate closest to the stairs had a window, but only Promise, from his top-level cell, looked beyond the prison's walls.

The guard jabbed me harder, then barked, "Come on, Shannon."

I grit my teeth but I did not move.

"Ease up on him, Tom," Promise said, his voice floating like a feather from his darkened cell. "He's walking the long mile this morning. Let him walk it in his own time, in his own way."

Promise's voice had a hypnotic quality. The young white guard simply stared at the old black man. I'd witnessed this scene many times: a few quiet words from Promise calming an inmate or a guard. I believe Promise could do this because he'd been here in this same prison for so long. In some cases, he'd actually seen the fathers and grandfathers of inmates and guards come and go. His thin, ebony body was stooped now, though his arm muscles hinted of a once younger, robust man. He had an uncanny worldliness about him. In all his years inside prison, I bet he'd seen a lot more of life than the average person sees outside. I believe that Promise had found peace with his lifetime incarceration, and that gave him tremendous power over others on both sides of the cell bars who were seeking a similar peace in their lives. I dropped my hand and Promise pulled his inside.

"Been two years," he said, his voice still a whisper. "Walking out may shock your system."

"I'll manage," I said. "I get to see my wife . . . and my son. That'll help."

"That boy needs you," Promise said.

I smiled. "He's thirteen now. Bet he thinks he's grown and doesn't need anyone."

"I needed my father, and he wasn't there for me. You needed your father and he wasn't there for you. JJ needs his father, and you can be there for him now."

"I want to make up for lost time with him and with Liz."

"A man leaving prison doesn't always get a hero's welcome," Promise said. "Don't be surprised if JJ's...(Continues)