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Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

Excerpt from “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” by Marvin Gaye and James Nyx. Copyright © 1971 Jobete Music Co., Inc. All rights controlled and administered by EMI April Music Inc. (ASCAP). All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission. Excerpt from “O Cantador,” lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. Copyright © by Threesome Music. Reprinted with the permission of Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman, c/o Threesome Music. Excerpt from “Two Dedications,” by Gwendolyn Brooks. Quotation from The Chicago Picasso, by Gwendolyn Brooks. Copyright © 1991, in her book Blacks, published by Third World Press, Chicago, 1991.

While some historical events depicted in this novel are factual, as are geography and certain locales, and certain persons and organizations in the public view, this is a work of fiction whose characters and their actions are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, or events is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author, nor does the author pretend to private information about such individuals.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110.

The text of this book is composed in Bembo with the display set in Copperplate Gothic.

Composition by Tom Ernst

Manufacturing by Quebecor Printing Book Group

Book design by Judith Stagnitto Abbate

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Woods, Paula L.

Inner city blues : a Charlotte Justice novel / by Paula L. Woods.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-393-04680-X

1. Afro-Americans—California—Los Angeles—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3573.06414I55 1999

813’ .54—dc21

98-19073

CIP

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

http://www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 10 Coptic Street, London WC1A 1PU

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