Lloyd Hollis Crooks was born and educated in the oil town of Fyzabad in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. He also attended Oxford Commercial College and Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York.

Crooks migrated to the United States in 1968, settling in Brooklyn, New York. Before leaving Trinidad & Tobago, he worked both as a Parliament and as a court reporter. In the office of Prime Minister, he covered several high level international conferences. In the U.S., Crooks worked as a legal assistant in various Wall Street law firms.

Mr. Crooks' travels to Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean have influenced not only his writing, but his love of music. He moonlights as a solo pianist; his hobbies are cricket and soccer; and has an avid passion for traversing the streets of New York City. He puts it aptly: "The streets give me the rythm; without it, I'm bare, and my story is sterile."

Grenada Ghost: Romance, Suspense, Murder
(Click to order on-line)

Author:  Lloyd Hollis Crooks
Publisher: Wayne Brathwaite Publishing
Date Published:  June 1999
Format:  Mass Market Paperbound

Read an Excerpt from Grenada Ghost

About the Book
Grenada Ghost, a provocative suspense thriller, crafted by Lloyd Hollis Crooks, centers on the solution the greenhorn detective, Lord Meath, brings to the puzzling tombstone epitaph which reads, "She was a mother without knowing it, and a wife, without letting her husband know it, except by her kind indulgence to him."

"Crooks is an exciting new voice in Caribbean literature. His language is rich and evocative, and his multilayered story of the immigrant experience is one to which all can relate"

The novel whose genesis is Fyzabad, a southern village in the twin-island Caribbean Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, erupts with passion, mystery, and murder on the American stage. "Crooks is an exciting new voice in Caribbean literature. His language is rich and evocative, and his multilayered story of the immigrant experience is one to which all can relate," comments Dr. Andrea Freud Loewenstein, English professor at Medgar Evers College and author of This Place and The Worry Girl.

Grenada Ghost encapsulates "the struggles, fortunes, politics, humor, and misdeeds of Caribbean people scattered throughout the diaspora...Crooks is a brilliant storyteller," comments Dr. Arthur N. Lewin, Chair - Black and Hispanic Studies, Baruch College, New York. The story line is brilliantly woven by Crooks as he portrays the protagonist, Lyle Gordon, caught in a web of murder and intrigue: Gordon gets between the sheets with a white reporter who, after the interlude, is found murdered.

Crooks further demonstrates his expertise as a writer as he intricately weaves within the central theme of suspense drama, sub themes which evoke compassion and empathy from the reader. The invasion of lively Caribbean-American masses on Eastern Parkway enjoying the culture of steelband music, street debates, and exotic, delectable cuisine is one of those sub themes. Police brutality on the streets of Brooklyn is another. It is this seeming dichotomy underlying the apparent singular central themes that magnetized the reader and keeps him reaching beyond the pages to a source within to solve not only the murder but universal questions. Crooks' work is highly emotive as he beckons and with cunning sleight of pen finally draws the reader farther into the recesses of his own intimate being to seek the answer.

His artistry is apparent, not only in the juxtaposition of diverse themes, but also in the variety of language. His use of the Caribbean dialect ribboned to the standard vernacular creates a balance and lends tonal color which, in itself, is representative of the very topics of race and culture that characterize Grenada Ghost. ~Wayne Brathwaite Publishing

Related Links
www.raiseyourglass.com/grenadaghost

 

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