Nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel and the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original

Introducing Filomena Buscarsela, born in poverty in the mountains of Ecuador and now a streetwise New Yorker with a fresh, distinctive voice and a caustic sense of humor, determined to devote her life to helping others. The problem is that as one of the first Latinas on the NYPD, she is not just a woman in a man’s world; she is a woman of color in a white man’s world. And it’s hell. Mistreated and double-crossed by her fellow officers, she is required to enforce unjust drug laws that she disagrees with and betray her own community.

Set in the early 1980s East Village art and punk rock milieus of Reagan’s increasingly polarized America, a murder case leads inexorably to an investigation of corporate environmental crime.

23 Shades of Black is the first of Kenneth Wishnia’s novels, featuring the irrepressible Filomena Buscarsela. All five—including Soft Money, The Glass Factory, Red House, and Blood Lake—are being reissued in definitive editions, with new introductions and extra stories, by PM Press. His latest novel is the historical mystery From Sun to Sun.

“A high-energy series. Filomena sprays attitude wherever she goes.” —Booklist“

"One of the most distinctive series in mystery fiction.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“One hell of a fine book, and Filomena is a cool, tough, troubled cop… This is good stuff—political, tough, biting, gutsy, even sensitive.”–Hardboiled

“Some of the finest writing out there.” —New Orleans Times-Picayune

“There’s nothing else out there remotely like his books.” —Rocky Mountain News