An extraordinary crime novel from a rising star, that follows the ripple effects of a tragic shooting throughout a Chicago community from the view of the teachers, police officers, and students impacted.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Hard Times by Jeff Boyd, which releases on March 17th 2026.
Buddy Mack has been caught in the middle of two worlds at war.
As an English teacher at a South Side, Chicago, high school lauded for its football team, but at risk in every other way, he tries to instill a love of literature. While all of his students face challenges, he’s especially concerned with a trio of boys who test him to no end but are full of promise and heart: Zeke, the football star; Truth, the sweet-talking charmer; and Dontell, Buddy’s most promising student.
At home, his wife, Chrissy, a successful corporate lawyer, is ready to upgrade to a big house on the North Side and start a family, but Buddy’s torn over the implications. And the closest person he has in his life to talk to is Chrissy’s little brother, Curtis, a corrupt Chicago cop.
When the two worlds collide in a shocking moment that rocks the school, Buddy has to choose a side and fight for all he holds dear. Hard Times takes stock of what it means to be there for your people whether you want to or not and unflinchingly confronts the American Dream—a moving, engrossing, and necessary read.
CHAPTER 1
Curtis reckoned this emergency call about a suspicious person in an alley off Woodlawn Avenue was placed by a U of C grad student frightened of the South Side. He’d bet two hundred dollars in church cash it was something like that. Already happened a few times this year. So close to campus, he didn’t see why them Mickey Mouse cops the university employed couldn’t have handled this situation instead of real cops like him.
“My arm. My fucking arm. She broke the bitch.”
“I didn’t do shit,” his partner, Esther, said. “Now sit your ass up.”
“Officer, sir, help me.” The suspect looked up at him with tears in her eyes.
Her tears didn’t sway him. “You heard her. How about you sit your ass up like my partner just said?”
The interaction hadn’t started like this, with the lady all hurt on the ground; they’d found the woman leaned up against the side of a garage in a stupor, with a slim glass pipe dangling in her hand so loose it was outrageous she hadn’t dropped it yet. When they took it from her, she hadn’t seemed to have noticed. Aside from the residue in the pipe, they’d found no other drugs or paraphernalia on her person. She’d stayed in a stupor until Esther started to frisk her, then she was all there and angry. The suspect called his partner a dyke-ass bitch, told her not to touch her underwear or it would be sexual assault. That’s when Esther got hot; once she was done checking the suspect’s pockets, she yelled at her to sit and pushed her at the same time, not giving the lady any time to comply or a chance to brace herself. Now his partner paced behind him, still hot, while the suspect on the ground in front of him looked hurt, on her back, holding her arm that bled from a scrape, rocking a little, her right shoulder bumping up against the chain-link fence that graced a slender, well-kept backyard and row house. Somebody else’s house and fence. Not the suspect’s. That was for sure. Which is why they’d been called to get her away from here. He felt a little bad for her getting knocked down by his partner. But life be like that for folks. People got out of your way, took what you had to give, or threw you to the dirt. There was almost no other room in which to operate in Chicago.
“She hurt me bad, can’t you see? My arm. She threw me, she didn’t have to do that. I’m bleeding.”
The suspect sat up against the fence. Thank God. He’d already taken off his latex gloves and didn’t feel like putting them on again in this sweltering heat, and it was a good sign for the paperwork. The suspect gave a name but had no identification.
“I’m hurting.”
“You should have complied instead of resisting.” He took off his sun-glasses to wipe his brow. He felt like a bulletproofed swamp monster. The trees were in all the wrong places. He’d pay a hundred in church cash for a cold brew from the coffee shop a few blocks down the street if a barista were to come and hand him one immediately. He pictured cold whiskeys at Dugan’s. Could almost taste them. Couldn’t wait for his last week as a beat cop to be over.
“She didn’t give me the chance to do what she was asking.”
“No, ma’am. That’s not true,” Esther said. His partner stood beside him now.
“Yes, it is. I wasn’t doing shit and you pushed me.”
Esther spoke in that singsong syrupy voice she used when she was beyond pissed: “No, sweetie. I asked you kindly to sit and then you just dead collapsed. Isn’t that right, Officer Thompson?”
God, he could use a drink. Cash was always welcome at the bar. He looked around. No cameras, no witnesses that he could see, not even whoever had called this in, maybe a nosy neighbor hiding behind a curtain somewhere, but probably a high-paying renter, maybe even a homeowner, a citizen on the side of the law and increasing home values.
“That’s what I saw,” he said. “She just fell.”
“Fuck y’all. I want y’all’s badge numbers. I’m fitting to file a complaint.”
“File whatever you want, you dirty-ass crack ho, see where it gets you.”
“Who are you calling dirty? Dyke-ass bitch.”
“Ma’am, if you don’t close your mouth, I’ll close it for you.”
“Easy,” he whispered.
Esther needed to take it easy. They’d been partners for two years, and he’d always ride with her, but breaking this lady’s arm for calling her a dyke was dumb. And what was the issue exactly anyway? Officer Ibrahim participated in all the parades, loved talking about her bitches on rotation. Said more crazy shit about women than any man he knew. To be fair, he knew her well enough to also know that she laid some of the macho shit on thick so the guys in the precinct would think twice about touching her or putting her down, but still, she was very out and proud. He, on the other hand, was straight as hell, and perps and citizens called him homophobic slurs all the time, told him to go fuck himself, called him a coon, an Uncle Tom, a slave, a nigger—with the hard r—but he never broke anyone’s arm for just talking, did he? Body blows, forceful holds, maybe a few cracked ribs, a little Taser action, pepper spray, pulling his service weapon when he didn’t really need to; sure, sometimes he had to protect himself or others, show his power and put people in their place, that was just part of the job. But breaking an old lady’s arm because she didn’t like being frisked was bullshit. It was how you ended up under another review. Problem with Esther was she didn’t think about that when she got hot. She’d do the damage, and if no heat came down, she’d make up a bar story about it or act like it never happened. If the heat did come, they’d lie. But it was the wrong time in their career trajectory for knocking around old ladies. The sarge liked his guys to fly under the radar. Which meant you only beat on people you could get away with beating: the drug dealers, the assholes, the young, the sinners your superiors would pat you on the back for roughing, say they hoped you’d gotten a few licks in for them, say how they missed those old days of cracking skulls.
Curtis grabbed Esther’s arm and spoke quietly. “Listen. Let’s get this done easy. I’ll call for paramedics. We won’t cite her for nothing. Only report we’ll make is that we tried to help a whacked-out Jane Doe who fell and hurt herself.”
“Great. You hear that, Josephine?” Esther said. “We’re going to get you help for that papier-mâché arm of yours, ’cause we’re the good guys. Bad guys would have messed you up good for that smart toothy mouth of yours, but we just trying to help you.”
“Ya’ll call this help?”
The woman laughed, hoarse and gravely. It was a tough laugh for him to stomach, for some reason. He turned his head away for a moment and wiped perspiration and tears from his eyes. No ID but she’d said her name was Josephine Harris. She was probably younger than she looked and the drugs had put rough years on her. Her face resembled his mother’s features enough for this woman to be one of his relatives. He had family all over Chicago he didn’t even know about. His mother had fled the city before his big sister, Chrissy, was born, had moved to the suburbs and shunned her family, who, she’d always said, were mostly messed-up people.
He turned back to the suspect. Her clothes and shoes weren’t so bad. Hair a mess but not like living-on-the-streets a mess.
“Don’t do drugs in this alley no more, Josephine,” he said. “People are watching.”
“I was just resting. Y’all planted that pipe on me. I can’t stand y’all. Everybody knows y’all cops is corrupt.”
Corrupt? That took him out. He and Esther busted out laughing.
God, did it feel good to laugh. He couldn’t remember the last time shit was so funny he actually slapped his damn leg. Corrupt because this woman got herself hurt by talking shit? No. That was on her. Corrupt? Nah? They were heroes.
The paramedics arrived.
He patted Esther on the back. “You cool?”
“Yeah. Let’s catch them up, then go get food and coffee.”
“I was on that same tip, partner.”
After the paramedics checked on the woman and loaded her into the ambulance, one walked up just as they were about to get into their marked SUV, a young Asian woman with tied-back dreads that Curtis had never worked with before; she looked angry. “Her left arm might be broken in two places and it’s all scraped up. You guys say she fell? She says you roughed her.”
“This your first day on the job or something?” his partner asked. “She was just coming out of a high, disillusioned, so what the hell does she know, anyway.”
“Excuse me?”
The paramedic looked back and forth like she was trying to figure out which of them was the pig to punch first.
“We’re not going to charge her,” he told her. “Now go do your job and take the poor woman to the hospital or wherever you think is best.”
“You guys are unbelievable,” the paramedic said.
“You know what you—” Before Esther went too far, he clapped a hand on her shoulder.
“Forget about this bitch,” he whispered to her.
“Goodbye, softie,” Esther said.
For a moment he’d felt sympathy for the suspect’s injury and the paramedic’s soft heart and all that, but getting stared at like he was trash made him feel like it was CPD against the world. Later that day when he and Esther located a serious drug dealer named Uncle Rob, who they’d found chilling all by himself on his grandmother’s porch on Thirty-Seventh and King Drive, instead of on one of the corners he ran, because these days Rob’s corners ran themselves without much outside pressure thanks to the Drug and Gang Task Force, Curtis reminded this sinner that if he didn’t have his contribution to the church by Friday night, at least a couple racks, Sergeant Kaminsky said to tell him he’d receive God’s wrath—the sarge told them to always be firm in their reminders, and this was the first one they’d ever given to Uncle Rob, who was a serious thug, so Curtis couldn’t say he wasn’t nervous. And in response, this Robert “Uncle Rob” Jackson, one-sixty soaking wet, in his mid-thirties, wearing black from head to toe, aside from a red do-rag, a fitted black White Sox cap, ripped-up black skinny jeans, black Jordan 10s, and a black hoodie, sat there in this weathered recliner on his grandmother’s porch and puffed away on a fat blunt, right there in front of them, making clouds, wearing shades, and not looking one bit stressed.
“‘God’s wrath,’ huh? Y’all two officer niggas must be new to this shit, ain’t you? Tell your sergeant I said fuck his tax. I already told him I ain’t paying it no more. Tell him to come find me himself if he want and I’ll tell it to him again. But not you two green-ass officer niggas, now leave me the fuck be.”
They did as Rob said, and it felt terrible. They couldn’t touch him and he knew it. They got back in the squad car and Curtis felt like no hero at all, his badge made of plastic.
They called it church cash because it was money taken from drug-and gun-slinging sinners. Curtis knew it wasn’t exactly right, but accepting that first stuffed envelope hadn’t felt like much of choice when it was slipped into his jacket by Sergeant Kaminsky’s most trusted officer, Alejandro Reyes, four months ago outside Dugan’s Bar. Curtis just couldn’t say no, and now he was in. What got them that first envelope was when he and Esther had stumbled upon a serious pot when responding to a domestic dispute and had called Sergeant Kaminsky instead of radioing it in; letting task force officers, Reyes and Leister, handle the evidence before it was officially photographed and seized by the CPD. You see, before Curtis saw Reyes and Leister put half the cash in a duffel bag and bounce, he’d honestly thought the sarge had wanted to be notified of their next big find so he and his guys could take credit for another big bust; he really hadn’t understood it was about robbing.
The domestic dispute they’d reported to that led to the envelopes coming their way was in response to a young woman who lived in an apartment on East Forty-Sixth and South Woodlawn who was through with the abuse she’d been getting from her boyfriend. The guy had knocked her around and threatened to kill her if she was still at their place when he got back from meeting with his boys. Well, it was her house, her name was on the lease, and him telling her to vacate her own place or else he’d kill her was just one step too far, that’s how she explained it when they stood in her nicely kept living room after answering the call. They hid in the stairwell, and as soon as her boyfriend came back and put his hand on the doorknob of her apartment, he and Esther got behind him with their guns drawn and told him to put his hands behind his head. The girlfriend wanted him gone for a very long time; didn’t care how much money she was throwing away. She pointed them to a false wall in the closet where the guy kept racks, probably held for someone else, because the boyfriend wasn’t a known dealer and didn’t have much of a record. She’d called them her heroes for saving her life. And what was more honorable than being a hero?
The church cash had come without warning. His partner seemed to have known all along, but he’d had no idea. Not that it mattered what he did or didn’t know prior to taking that first envelope; he’d taken it, crossed that line. And in Chicago you didn’t need a compass to know where you stood, because the streets were on a grid. As of next week, he and Esther would officially join Kaminsky’s Drug and Gang Task Force instead of just assisting. A little bump in the pay grade. He’d keep getting envelopes. Could afford for his kids to go to the Catholic school instead of this public mess.
