Created by Michael Amedeo
THE WORLD is White, the world is Black…
It’s San Francisco in 1949, and when we meet him in the series debut, 2024’s Past Tense, MATT MOULTON is a WWII vet and an ex-cop, now toiling away as a “stylishly embittered private dick.” He’s tough and bitter, and about as white as they come. And he’s got a Black girlfriend, Gina Harner.
Whom he loves very much.
So there….
The race card gets played quite a bit in this series, but after serving Uncle Sam as a sniper (he calls it “assassin”) in occupied France, and “crooking the law as a San Francisco cop in a suit,” not much phases him.
He may not be happy about it, but he’s seen it all.
“Sorting through clients’ dirty laundry as a dick for hire”?
Dealing with “the corruption, the intolerance, and the apathy that linger in that violent nation’s shadows”?
So, walking down the street with a Black girlfriend?
Why not?
But eventually the pervasive racism, sexism, and systemic corruption wears Moulton and Gina down, and in the follow-up, Fade to Black (2025), Moulton leaves Gina behind, to take on a case that sends him to Chicago and then Los Angeles on behalf of a Black woman who happens to run a Chicago mob — which oddly enough seems more integrated and tolerant than much of the country at the time. Go figure.
So far, so good. And then the author himself, Michael Amedeo, contacted me with heartbreaking news. Chiding me for not paying enough attention to his previous books, he solemnly informed me that “… tough Moulton just passed away at the tender age of 35. He doesn’t know how it happened, but the torn bullet marks in the heart of his jacket strongly suggest he was murdered.”
Yikes!
But in a twist right out of Sunset Boulevard, Moulton decides to investigate his own death in the upcoming Dead Ahead, scheduled for publication in late 2026.
Of course he does.
STRAIGHT FROM THE AUTHOR’S MOUTH
- “I love Dead Ahead, but I’m a little biased: I wrote it. Living through one’s death is a bad spot to be in. But maybe Moulton’s mysterious plight will spark you to give this upcoming book a critical look. It would be a crime not to at least read it!
— Michael Amedeo
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After dropping out of high school and later having nothing to his name but a GED, Michael Amedeo began writing. He earned a BA in Political Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MA from the University of Chicago, before becoming an award-winning creative copywriter for corporations and agencies, a freelance film critic and journalist for several newspapers and magazines, and a PR and media relations writer for still more organizations. More recently he’s turned to fiction, where he’s “used his hardboiled film noir background to create the stylishly embittered private dick, Matt Moulton.”
NOVELS
- Past Tense (2024) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Fade to Black (2025) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Dead Ahead (2026)
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- They Left Their Hearts…
San Francisco Eyes
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
