The World As It Is by Donald Levin (signed)

Against the backdrop of actual events in 1963, the novel follows four fictional Detroiters whose lives intersect when a shocking act of police violence—the real-life 1963 murder of Cynthia Scott, a Black woman, by a white policeman—inflames the city.

The main characters are Amp Hamilton, a young Black aspiring Motown musician who witnesses the killing; Hannah Posner, a fiery civil rights attorney battling racism and police corruption in her search for justice; David Buchalter, a drifting warehouse worker searching for meaning at the beginning of a decade of social upheaval; and Denny Rankin, an ex-cop private investigator whose probe into the death of a small-time con artist draws him deep into Detroit’s criminal underworld.

The World As It Is brings these characters together as it recreates the era in rich historical detail, with civil rights, organized crime, Motown, Black nationalism, and the Kennedy assassination all pressing in on the story.

This is the fourth volume in Levin’s Detroit Quartet, a series of interlocking Detroit-based historical novels. Previous books are Savage City (2021), set in 1932; The Arsenal of Deceit (2023), set in 1941; and The Ghosts of Detroit (2024), set in 1955. Each book is a stand-alone work that follows four fictional characters involved in actual historical events specific to the work’s time period, and explores how we got to ‘the world as it is’ in 2026.

“When it comes to writing crime fiction, you need to hit the target dead center with as much storytelling force as possible. Donald Levin—not unlike Detroit legends Elmore Leonard and Loren Estleman—always hits the bullseye. This new one is further proof of this.”
–Stephen Mack Jones author of August Snow

“An unflinching, immersive, and incendiary portrait of injustice . . . a story that lingers long after the final page.”
-The Prairies Book Review

$ 22.95