RadioFreeLiberal.com

........"It's my tribute to a familiar sort of figure in TV and comics and movies of the paranormal investigator," Ahmed says. "It's this character who finds some occult secrets behind the everyday life that others don't get a glimpse of." (Think of shows like The X-Files, Twin Peaks, or, going back to the 1970s, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which Ahmed says was a particular influence on Abbott.)

"It's just this type that people are interested in, this dogged investigator," Ahmed says. "For me, I wanted to tell a story with that sort of protagonist — but maybe not the type that always seems to be at the center of those stories."

In Abbott's case, that means "a main character who is woman, who is black, who is bisexual," Ahmed says. "She's all of those things in an era where there's a lot of hostility, particularly in the workplace, toward people who are not straight white guys."

Given the ingredients, it might be easy to assume Abbott is a campy blaxploitation sendup. It is not. Ahmed sets the story in 1972, against a grim backdrop of post-1967 racial paranoia. It begins with Abbott investigating a gruesome crime scene involving a decapitated police horse, initially believed to be perpetrated by Black Panther "negro agitators."......

"It's just this type that people are interested in, this dogged investigator," Ahmed says. "For me, I wanted to tell a story with that sort of protagonist — but maybe not the type that always seems to be at the center of those stories."

In Abbott's case, that means "a main character who is woman, who is black, who is bisexual," Ahmed says. "She's all of those things in an era where there's a lot of hostility, particularly in the workplace, toward people who are not straight white guys."