As someone who considers herself a crime aficionado, finding out there was this interracial couple, Alla Mae and Gordon, that I’d never heard about was a first. From page one I dived into Dewey Reynolds' recounting of the lives, loves and crimes of this intrepid couple. One of the things Two Shades of Vice does beautifully is to keep reminding the reader that being an interracial couple in the era they were was hard enough, given the racism, segregation and Jim Crow, and to add a life of crime on top of that was crazy. Or brave, depending on your perspective. For the most part, I had a good time reading this fast paced tale of sex and crime and violence, but there were times when I wondered if this was all true crime or if some things were embellished.

Despite that, Dewey Reynolds created a wonderful account of a pair of criminals I’d never heard of, and he made it compelling. From ‘four foot eleven of pure hustle,’ he had me hooked on the story, the biographies of the heroes of this tale, and the more I learned about how they came to be, the more I wanted to know. Two Shades of Vice is, at its heart, a love story. A twisted, dark kind of love, for sure but not the kind that ends with one half of the couple dead. In their own way, Alla Mae and Gordon got the happy ending they both secretly wanted, but never really believed they would have.

Two Shades of Vice is so aptly sub-titled Based on the True Story of an Interracial Couple’s Life Together in Crime, a gripping true crime story by Dewey Reynolds. It is the 1960s and the place is Kansas City, where a dreaded criminal, Gordon Reynolds, a man who has served jail time in many states over a period of twenty-five years, sets out to start a new business venture in brokering prostitution, contraband cigarettes, liquor, and hijacking. He meets another criminal, Alla Mae, a woman with a long history of crime and jail time; a woman who has walked the streets of Kansas as a prostitute and been jailed many times for solicitation and prostitution. The two make an ideal pair, with Alla Mae using her contacts and experience to bring in clients.

But they have to overcome unimaginable odds to thrive in business, facing reprisals from racist cops, ruthless competition from gangsters, and the disdain of supremacist groups. Can they survive and stick together as a couple while building a business in crime? Two Shades of Vice has strong racial undertones, a well-written story with characters that readers will learn to like, in spite of their personal views about crime and racism. The story explores themes of family, racial discrimination, crime, and social justice. Dewey Reynolds weaves historical elements into the narrative and allows the reader to get glimpses of Kansas in the 1960s. I loved the writing style, friendly and down to earth, with compelling descriptions of places and characters. The narrative is strong and honest, even ruthlessly honest, and the story is both informative and entertaining.