Pam Kelley started her career at a wonderful afternoon newspaper, the Charlotte News, where she covered murders, many zoning hearings, and, on one memorable night, a wreck that spilled chicken necks all over Trade Street. She reported for more than 30 years at the Charlotte Observer on wide-ranging subjects, including higher education, books, and family issues. She co-authored an investigation of group homes for mentally ill children that prompted the governor to order statewide inspections. And she spent a year writing stories about a fifth-grade teacher and his students in one of Charlotte's highest-poverty schools. She first met Money Rock in 1986, when she was covering a cocaine-related shootout in Piedmont Courts, the public housing project pictured on the book's cover.