Promise Boys by nick brooks

​A high-stake YA mystery thriller that follows three boys at a Washington DC charter school who are forced to investigate their principals murder in a twenty-four-hour period, in order to clear their own names

​The Urban Promise Boys Preparatory School promises to turn boys into men, to help the city’s young people avoid society’s cracks. They promise to transform roughneck boys from being at risk, to upstanding and successful young men.

J.B., Ramón, and Try have inherited the program’s routine muscle memory: shirts tucked, yes sirs and no mamas, no rough-housing, no missing curfew, rigorous test prep, and more. This is what is takes to be college bound, to avoid the fates of the men in their neighbourhoods. Or so they have been told.

But when their principal ends up dead and the cops come sniffing around, the trio comes face-to face with a slew of rotten secrets about their school. And they soon become the case’s prime suspects. With no one to help them, they must find out what really happened in order to avoid arrest. An exquisitely taut mystery combined with social commentary about the way American society too often fails boys of colour, Promise Boys is a Black and Latinx A Separate Peace meets One of Us is Lying.

​Nick Brooks is an author and award-winning filmmaker from Washington, DC.
He is a 2020 graduate of USC's TV and Film Production program. His short film,
Hoop Dreamin', earned him the George Lucas Scholar Award and was a finalist
in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Film Fest. He is currently in development for his first
feature film, We Were Born Kings, with Mandalay Pictures. Before becoming a
filmmaker, Nick was an educator working with at-risk youth and many of his
stories are colored by his experiences with the children and families of his
community.