Synopsis
The Killing Breeze is a story of societal unrest told from the point of view of two main characters, opposites in a sense: one being a Black male Ph.D., the other a white female undergraduate. The unrest takes place in the fictional Falcon City; a city in America that becomes the focal point of national police killings; every time a Black person is killed by police nationally, a white officer is slain locally in Falcon City. The young white female undergraduate, Denise Thomas, makes the initial correlation. She seeks out Dr. Noble Breeze, the Ph.D., to correlate her theory. Due to the police being shot, the city is in a volatile state, tense throughout, and that tension remains throughout the novel generating a page-turning read. Dr. Noble Breeze is in no way a typical academic; his checkered past includes psychiatric ward hospitalization, and his current life involves clandestine activities with a militarized think-tank known as the American Purist Society. The racial tension between the police, The American Purist Society, and the Black citizens of Falcon drive the novel to a climatic clash between the Black citizens, white supremacists, the military, and the police; at the center of the conflict are the national police killings. The novel is alarming in its timeliness and unsettling in the revelations of American thought; what a reader presumes will happen, doesn’t; the novel is not a cliffhanger – it drops the reader off a cliff.
Which five words best describe The Killing Breeze?
Justice, Race, Revolution, Secretes, and Psychosis.
Can you share one highlight from the book?
There is a scene when two racist officers pull over Dr. Breeze at the beginning of a psychotic episode; a shift in the power dynamics of the situation is surprising – a Black sergeant arrives to diffuse the situation.
What is the purpose of this book?
To speak against the police shootings of Black people.
Are there themes that you find turn up again and again in your work? A common thread?
The misuse of power, the fallacy of white supremacy, and love being influenced by racism.
Which character or part of the book was the most fun to write? Which part was the hardest?
A fun scene occurs at the end when Dr. Breeze gets empowered to shift a traditional academic tradition, the hardest part is the death when the police shoot down an innocent man concerned about his friend.
Can you tell us something that even your most loyal fans may not know about you?
I’ve read Toni Morrison’s ‘Jazz’ five times .
Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
Read my short story collection ‘Acorns in a Skillet – Stories of Racecraft in America’.
Tony Lindsay is the author of eleven novels; One Dead Preacher, Street Possession, Chasin’ It, Urban Affair, One Dead Lawyer, More Boy than Girl, One Dead Doctor, The Killing Breeze, Chess Not Checker, Melody Knight a Vampire’s Tale, Three Married Women and Her – and five short story collections titled Pieces of the Hole – Fat from Papa’s Head – Emotional Drippings stories of Love, Lust, and Addiction – Almost Grown – and Acorns in a Skillet stories of Racecraft in America.
