Rachel Howzell Hall Is Having a Moment.

Rachel Howzell Hall is having a moment. It’s the full circle kind, and one in which every experience, no matter how painful, has served a purpose.

Since May, the author has not only seen the publication of the second book in her bestselling Haven thriller series featuring PI Sonny Rush, Mist and Malice (following 2025’s Fog and Fury), but the reissue of two suspense novels she originally self-published when her writing career appeared DOA to everyone but her.

“It’s a wonderful, wonderful time. I’m blessed.” Hall says. “It’s a weird kind of circular, nothing is ever wasted moment for me, that Mist and Malice and Fog and Fury would now be joined by something I started so long ago, stories that I loved and had confidence in even when nobody else did.”

That self-assurance would pay off … eventually. Hall—a two-time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize—has now published sixteen novels and seen her name appear on the Amazon, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestsellers lists. 

But hers is not an overnight success story. After the publication of her debut, A Quiet Storm (2002), her then-agent couldn’t sell a second novel. Howzell was told that her storytelling sensibilities—“Black but not black enough”—simply didn’t appeal to traditional publishers, who felt her voice too niche to attract a large readership.

Rather than selling out (or packing it in), Hall began work on what would become The View from Here (2010)—a domestic suspense novel about a woman whose husband goes missing while scuba diving. It nearly landed her a new agent, who oversaw extensive revisions before eventually passing on the project. Nevertheless, Hall pressed on.

“I uploaded The View from Here onto Amazon’s self-publishing platform,” she says. “I learned what marketing was. I learned how to do all the stuff that everybody else was doing … the editing and the covers and all the rest of it.”

While the book wasn’t a breakthrough success, it was an education in packaging and promotion and provided Hall with a sense of validation.

“It was exciting because I was getting money directly for my work,” she says. “But then I needed something else … this was when I determined that I really, really wanted to write a procedural, but not a cop thing yet because I was still unsure of that whole world.” 

Enter Syeeda “Sy” McKay, an ambitious to the point of obsessive crime reporter who will stop at nothing to get the story. And justice. In No One Knows You’re Here (2011), she’s tracking a serial killer known as the Phantom Slayer—a fictional caper inspired by a real-life crime spree.

“At that moment, there was someone going around killing black sex workers in my neighborhood,” Hall, who was both fascinated and frightened, says. “I named [the book] No One Knows You’re Here because no one in Los Angeles, not the mayor, not the LAPD, was doing anything about these poor women being murdered.”

When this book also failed to sell, Hall made the decision to once again self-publish.

“What was wonderful about this book was that I learned that I liked this kind of procedural land,” Hall recalls. “I liked writing about crime and something as bold and ugly as a serial killer targeting women and being successful at it because no one cared about them.”

But first, Hall would endure a series of setbacks that might fell a lesser person: the first of two bouts with breast cancer (which was discovered while she was pregnant with her daughter), her husband being unexpectedly laid off, and a seemingly endless ream of rejection letters. 

“It was writing that kept me sane,” Hall—who would return to her full-time job as a technical writer after giving birth—says. “It was my free therapy. And so I kept writing, and writing, and writing.” 

That writing gave her a much-needed sense of control; she was able to operate with blinders on, the compulsion to create serving as a counterbalance to the uncertainty of her future.

“I’m learning about fear. I’m learning about vulnerability. I’m learning about living life holding your breath … which is all great material when you’re a suspense writer,” Hall remembers. “I’m taking everything that I’m learning and experiencing and I’m folding it into what is happening in my stories.”

Syeeda McKay, then, would be a breast cancer survivor, her brush with death affirming her zeal for life. (Hall would later revive the character as Detective Lou Norton’s best friend in a four-book series set against the backdrop of gentrified Los Angeles.) 

“Cancer was a clarifier … Illness has a way of putting things in perspective,” she says. “It was that fire that said, You’ve done the scary thing … I’m not scared anymore of those things that used to scare me, and the big thing was writing a true procedural.”

And so she went all in on that genre, in which method is key to solving the mystery. Despite not being a cop or a lawyer, she knew fear and crime and the vast and varied lands of Los Angeles.

“I wanted to write Walter Mosley meets Terry McMillan, Devil in a White Dress meets Waiting to Exhale,” Hall says. “And that ended up being Land of Shadows.”

Fittingly, Land of Shadows (2014) would be the proverbial light that pierced the darkness. The book—which scored Hall her “forever agent” Jill Marsal and was subsequently bought by Forge—introduced homicide detective Elouise “Lou” Norton.

“She is a community police officer,” Hall says of her wise and wise-cracking heroine, whose personal and professional lives are in perpetual conflict. “She really makes people want to feel good and empowered and happy that the cops are there.”

Lou Norton would headline three more books. Then, Hall would branch out again with the Mexico-set standalone. They All Fall Down (2019), which was nominated for Anthony, International Thriller Writers, and Lefty awards. Several singular works of suspense followed, including And Now She’s Gone and We Lie Here, both of which were nominated for the Los Angeles Book Prize, and the Anthony Award-nominated These Toxic Things. (Hall also expanded her repertoire to include the Vallendor “romantasy” saga.)

In 2025, Hall launched her first Haven thriller, Fog and Fury, for Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint. The book introduced former detective Alyson “Sonny” Rush, who relocated to the outwardly idyllic coastal town of Haven to join her godfather’s PI agency following her dismissal from the LAPD.

“Sonny takes all of her LA with her,” Hall—a native of Los Angeles who is no stranger to the city’s tougher neighborhoods—says. “And that can be a bad thing because she has that kind of LA confidence where she will call things out. And those small-town people off the beautiful coast of California don’t want someone like her calling things out. She’s not going to be quiet about it.”

The character, then, is a marked contrast to her predecessor, Lou Norton, both in terms of personality and process. Brash and badass, Sonny no longer has the badge to compel cooperation. Rather, she is confrontational and cunning—and deeply compassionate under the tough-talking exterior.

“I love her character,” Hall says. “She is not as noble as Lou. She’s had a different kind of life … I think she’s far more vulnerable than Lou could ever be.”  

That vulnerability is on full display in May’s Mist and Malice. On the case of both a missing laborer and a young runaway who has resurfaced with a harrowing story of survival, Sonny is also harboring a broken heart while bearing witness to her elderly mother’s descent into dementia.

“She has a lot going on. That was fun to write, and it was hard. Women writers, and especially black women writers, have to make sure that our characters are likeable,” Hall says. “I’m like, okay. She can be all this and still be likeable. I think a lot of women … have as many distractions and are just as angry and exhausted by it all. It’s a relatable thing.”

But Hall is quick to point out that the concept of relatability transcends her example and has crossed over into crime fiction in a big way. Indeed, marginalized voices have now entered the mainstream, depicting a wide array of colors and cultures that were once muted.

“It’s exciting to see just how much the crime community has grown since Land of Shadows came out,” Hall says. “We still have a ways to go … but there are more of us than ever before, and everyone is bringing something different … I’m so happy that folks are not only getting a chance to share their lives but we’re getting to read about them.” 

These reading experiences can expand our collective worldview, if only vicariously, by fostering a sense of empathy and understanding. This is not only essential to personal development but in combating the widespread ignorance and intolerance that continues to dominate headlines and headspace.

“I like being able to write stories that reflect the lives and struggles of others who are just as marginalized as black people,” Hall says. “The immigrant thing is not my struggle, per se. But it is a labor thing … and it’s a crime thing. We’re all affected by it, and I wanted Sonny to give voice to that.”

And so we’re right back where we started, with a writer—albeit a more seasoned and successful one—who still finds purpose in illuminating the shared human experience by telling stories of life and death and striving.

“It feels incredible,” Rachel Howzell Hall says. “I was a baby writer—and a baby crime writer at that. But the stories are there. The care is there. The universe of Los Angeles is there. It’s all right there, and I can’t wait for people to start coming back to it.”