AFRICAN AMERICAN MYSTERY/CRIME AUTHORS OPINIONS ON

An Ex-acquaintance Reappears Bringing Danger

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 20:16:00 +0000

If you enjoy a novelist’s series, sadness creeps over you when you know you are reading the last novel in the series. Of Blood and Sorrow is the eighth and last novel in Valerie Wilson Wesley’s Tamara Hayle series. She has written several children and romance novels, but as far as I can determine, she hasn’t written anymore Tamara Hayle novels.

Lilah Love, the young woman Tamara met in Jamaica while on vacation several years ago, enters her life again. She almost got Tamara killed when Tamara was vacationing in Jamaica. An older Lilah, just like in Jamaica, brings trouble trailing behind her. She demands that Tamara bring her baby to her. She threatens to harm her son Jamal if Tamara doesn’t get Baby Dal from Lilah’s sister Thelma Lee. She gave the baby to Thelma Lee when she was in trouble and now Thelma Lee refuses to give it back. Tamara wants nothing to do with Lilah because “Death had clung to Lilah Love like fleas to an alley car down in Jamaica, and I didn’t want to bring those bad vibes into my life.” After Lilah leaves, she throws the address of the sister in the wastebasket.

To complicate matters further, Treyman Barnes, an alleged reformed gangster, hires Tamara to find Baby Dal and bring her to him. Troy, his son, is the baby’s father. Lilah married him before he was sent to Iraq and divorced him soon shortly afterwards. Tamara takes the job and tells Treyman that Lilah has also asked her to get the baby back. She doesn’t tell him that Lilah’s sister has the baby. She thinks it’ll be the easiest fee she ever earned. The ensuing event will prove her wrong.

Later, Thelma Lee calls Tamar, explains she knows Lilah is doing business with her but doesn’t explain how she knows. She’s frightened because some people, she says, have been following her. Tamara can come get the baby because Thelma Lee is tired of the drama around Baby Dal. She and the baby are living with their Aunt Edna Sweets.

Tamara runs into a problem when she visits the home. Thelma Lee and the baby aren’t there, and the aunt’s boyfriend, Jimson Weed Carter, a Vietnam veteran, displays a hostile attitude toward Tamara.

Her second problem when she returns home is the police are looking for Jamal. Lilah Love was killed, and they found an item in her car that belonged to him. If the killer suspects he saw what happened, he or she might be looking for Jamal. From a friend in the Belvington Heights Police Department, where Tamara used to work, she learns Lilah died from a blow with a fist to her throat that crushed her larynx.

Tamara suspects Lilah’s boyfriend Turk might be the killer until he is found in a motel room with his throat cut. She also suspects Treyman until he also is found with his throat cut. For Tamara, the only suspects left are Troy Barnes, a veteran of the Iraq war suffering from PTSD, and his mother Nellie Barnes, who suffers from one of those mysterious literary diseases.

Of the eight novels, I liked Of Blood and Sorrow the best. It has a real surprise twist for which Wesley deftly prepares the reader.

This is my last post. These days I struggle to find words to describe my impressions of the novels I read. While my reading vocabulary is intact, my writing vocabulary seems to have diminished. The words don’t come as easily as they did when I was younger. I’m sure, dear readers, you are aware that my reviews in the past year have been bland. I simply no longer have the energy to do the reading, evaluation, and writing.

Another reason for giving up the blog is that, after reading Google’s message on Sunday, 20, 2016, about cookies and the European Union, I didn’t feel up to taxing my brain with yet another problem of learning how the Internet works. Maintaining the blog has gotten too technical and my aging brain is resisting the effort to keep up.

It’s been fun. Thanks for reading my blog.

Best Friends Forever

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 05 Nov 2016 14:35:00 +0000

Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded

Gertrude Stein

Friendship is very precious and we like to believe when we’re in high school that our friendships will last forever. Of course, few of us have friendships from high school that last. The worse thing about friendship is breaking up on unfriendly terms.

In Dying In The Dark, the seventh novel in Valerie Wilson Wesley’s Tamara Hayle series, for three straight nights Tamara dreams about Celia Jones, a childhood friend. They were like sisters until the friendship ended over a man. The dreams began a month after an unknown killer had shot Celia on New Years Day. In the dreams Celia cries out for Tamara’s help.

Two weeks after the dreams stop, Celia’s teenage son Cecil Jones, who found his mother’s body, wants to hire Tamara to find out who killed her. He came to her because he found her name in his mother’s notebook and he doesn’t trust the police to investigate the death of an unimportant black woman. He pays Tamara $400 as a retainer and promises to pay her more. Of course she wonders where or how a teenager would get so much money.

When Tamara tries to contact him the next day, she learns an unknown assailant killed him. She agonizes over what to do with the $400. She doesn’t want to give it to Cecil’s ex-convict father Brent Liston. Her sense of obligation kicks in when she thinks about Celia’s cry for help in the dream. They once were close friends. She will do what she was paid to do: find Celia’s killer and maybe Cecil’s also.

Naturally, Tamara disagrees with the local police detective investigating the two murders. Tamara suspects prominent businessman Drew Sampson killed Celia because she had an affair with his wife Annette. Detective Griffin, whom she knows from another case, tells her the evidence points to Annette as the killer, but he doesn’t have a motive. The police know who killed Cecil and concluded his death had no connection to Celia’s murder. Tamara is not so certain and continues her investigation into both murders. The only evidence she has is Celia’s notebook in which she wrote the letters ABCD. She thinks if she can figure out what the letters stand for she’ll have the name of the killer.

The investigation reveals things about her former best friend that Tamara never knew, including the fact she had a son. She also learns that when they were freshmen in high school Celia had her first sexual experience with one of the three big men on campus. Those three were seniors Drew Sampson, Larry Walton, and Clayton Donovan, all of whom went on to become important men in the community. Could one of them have killed Celia for fear she would reveal damaging information about him?

Wesley does an admirable job of delaying the identity of the killer until the thrilling last chapter. You will enjoy Dying in the Dark because it is one of those novels you won’t want to put down, not even to rest your eyes for a minute.

Don’t Look Back, The Devil May Be Following

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Tue, 11 Oct 2016 11:51:00 +0000

PI Tamara Hayle is a tough, badass lady when facing down dangerous bad guys. When it comes to helping troubled teenagers, however, she takes on the role of a caring parent. The caring parent is on full display as she goes undercover to search for the runaway girl from a wealthy family in The Devil Riding, Valerie Wilson Wesley’s sixth novel in her Tamara Hayle series.

Dominique Desmond, the wife of wealthy Foster Desmond, hires Tamara to find her 18-year-old runaway daughter, Gabriella. Dominique didn’t go to the police because Foster said it would brand Gabriella as a runaway and embarrass the family name for people to know she's a troubled child.

Dominique thinks she ran away with a boy called Rook and is in danger. She learned that Gabriella shared an apartment in Atlantic City with Layne Grimaldi, a young woman Gabriella’s age, from someone who called her and gave her the number of the apartment. News reports in Atlantic City speculated that a serial killer on the loose might have killed Layne. The killer had murdered five women. Dominique worried that Gabriella would be next.

As the interview with Dominique ends, Foster and his son Carver enter the room. He is Gabriella’s stepfather, and Dominique is his second wife. Tamara’s immediate impression of him is he is the husband who most be obeyed. He seems unconcerned about Gabriella’s disappearance. Instead of providing any information, he orders Tamara to send her reports to the lawyer who recommended her and warns her not to fudge on the expenses. She suspects his attitude toward Gabriella might be the reason she ran away.

Young Carver walks with Tamara to her car. He seems not to care about Gabriella but, nevertheless, asks Tamara to call him first if she finds her because he must tell her something.

After not having any luck finding where Gabriella might have gone after leaving Layne’s apartment, Tamara goes undercover as a bartender in a suite in an Atlantic City hotel. In the suite Delmundo Real, a Dominican with a bad reputation, hosts card games for gangsters. The hotel manager tells her teenage girls have been seen going in and out of the suite. Tamara befriends Amaretta, a 16-year-old girl who tries to buy a drink. She watches Amaretta exit the suite in the company of Delmundo. Her mothering instinct kicks-in, and she begins thinking of how to rescue Amaretta as well as Gabriella. Tamara suspects, though Amaretta denies it, that she knows Gabriella.

Gabriel Wallace, Gabriella’s biological father, is no help. She came by his house but he claims not to know where she is. He isn’t worried because the Lord will protect her. However, his white wife, Louella, with whom Gabriella had been in contact, gives Tamara the address of Gabriella’s friend Jayne with whom she shared an apartment after Layne was killed. Gabriella left Jayne’s place without paying her share of the rent.

Jayne is later killed, and her death is attributed to the serial killer. Since there is no news of Gabriella being harmed, Tamara assumes she is alive and she must find her before the serial killer does. She also feels she must save Amaretta from Delmundo, whom she believes might be involved in the killings.

Though he doesn’t rescue her this time, Tamara’s complicated and enigmatic romantic interest, Basil Dupre, again enters the picture and warns her about the dangerous Dominican Delmundo Real. When she accuses him of being as dangerous and bad as Delmundo, he gives a lecture on good and evil as a way of explaining why he is not like Real. For the reader, the lecture reflects on what happens in the central plot—Tamara’s search for Gabriella.

The Devil Riding asks the question “how do we recognize the face of evil?” Once Tamara recognizes it through the revelation of the Desmond’s secrets, it shocks her. It also will shock you.

Moving On Up Is dangerous

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 13:41:00 +0000

In Easier To Kill, the fifth novel in Wesley’s Tamara Hayle series, a black woman survives rape by her foster father and teenage prostitution to become a famous radio host of her own show. But she can’t completely escape her past.

Mandy Magic, the famous host of a nighttime radio talk show, hires Tamara to find out who sent her a note with the words “Movin’ On Up” written on it. She received the note shortly after her cousin Tyrone Mason was stabbed to death in a city park frequented by gay men. The words are the title to the theme song of the 1970s TV show “The Jeffersons.”

A few days later, Mandy’s office manager and best friend since grammar school Pauline Reese is strangled to death. We are not told what is in the second not Mandy receives after Pauline’s death. The next victim is Kenton Daniels, III whom Mandy hired as a consultant. He, like Tyrone, is stabbed to death. Although the two men were stabbed and Pauline was strangled, Tamara believes the three murders are connected and that the connection lies in Mandy Magic’s past. Mandy doesn’t receive a note after Kenton’s death, suggesting maybe the killer is getting closer to her. She doesn’t want Tamara to investigate or talk to the police about the murders. She insists that Tamara confine her investigation to finding out who sent the notes.

Thinking about the murders and the words “Movin’ On Up,” Tamara believes the killer, in killing people close to Mandy, is moving on up to finally go after her. Thus, she fears 18-year-old Taniqua, Mandy’s adopted daughter, might be next while at the same time she considers her a possible suspect (telling you why would be a spoiler).

Tamara becomes frustrated with the case because she feels Mandy is keeping a secret from her. Mandy refuses to talk about her past and insists that Tamara not involve the police. Tamara’s frustration boils over, and when she confronts her uncooperative client and insists she tell her the truth, Mandy fires her. As Tamara leaves, she sees a man enter the house and follows him in expecting the worse. The confrontation between the man and Mandy reveals her secret. After learning the truth Tamara suffers a bout of deep depression. She admired Mandy and considered her a survivor because she moved on up from working as a teen prostitute to become the famous host of her own radio show.

EAISER TO KILL is short, only 193 pages, but the crisp, conversational prose maintains the easy flowing pace and the suspense from start to finish. The tension builds slowly and is not relieved until the very last page when the identity of the killer is revealed. The story of a woman surviving her soul draining past and becoming famous is both uplifting and depressing (though I’m not sure Wesley meant it to be uplifting or depressing). You’ll have to read it to find out why, after the revelation of Mandy’s secret, Tamara goes into deep depression.

Paying a Dead Brother's Debt

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 12:06:00 +0000

In the three novels I've read in Valerie Wesley Wilson's Tamara Hayle series, memories of her dead brother Johnny haunts Tamara. She struggles with forgiving him for committing suicide when she was in her teens. In the fourth novel, "No Hiding Place" she feels she must pay a debt she considers he owes to a man whom he mentored when the man was a boy.

Tamara reluctantly takes a murder case when Bessie Raymond visits her office and asks her to find out who killed her son Shawn Raymond. Tamara tries to explain that solving murders is the job of the police. Bessie refuses to take no for an answer and asks how much it’ll cost for two weeks of work on the case.

As the interview progresses, Tamara recognizes Miss Raymond who had lived in the same neighborhood as her family. The recognition triggers a memory of the young boy her brother Johnny mentored as part of “Project Touch and Change.” That young boy was Shawn Raymond. The relationship ended when Johnny killed himself. Not only did his death leave Tamara without a big brother, it also left the young boy without a mentor. She feels Johnny failed her and the young boy. Had he lived maybe Shawn Raymond would have had a better life and still be alive. She feels Johnny owes a debt to Bessie because in committing suicide he failed her son. She takes the case because Johnny “had always been a man who paid his debts” and now she must pay the debt for him. Besides, she needs the money.

Bessie admits Shawn Raymond was a drug dealer and gunrunner. From the police investigator, Tamara learns Shawn was shoot through the heart with a .38, and the gun hasn’t been found. The investigator suspects a rival might have killed him.

Bessie also said Shawn fathered two children. One is a 13-year-old boy named Rayshawn Rudell whose mother is Viola Rudell, a small woman with a reputation for violence. The other is a baby boy whose mother is Gina Lennox, one of the twin daughters of retired policeman Gus Lennox.

As Tamara continues what she considers to be a futile investigation, she gets involved with the Lennoxs, a middle class black family that remained in the South Ward when other black residents left. Gus is a local celebrity. He was the first black policeman to go undercover. He gained his reputation of as a good, tough policeman after bringing down the Prince Street Gang while working undercover. He has two brothers, Zeke, who spent time in jail, and the youngest Ben, with whom Tamara had an affair after she divorced her husband DeWayne. The two remaining relatives are his wife Mattie and his twin daughters Gina and Lena.

Shawn had an affair with both daughters. Lena, the rebellious daughter, moved on after introducing her sister Gina to Shawn. Shawn abused Gina and forced her to perform horrific and humiliating sexual acts. Since the Lennoxs hated Shawn and prevented Bessie from seeing her grandbaby, Augustus Lennox Raymond, Tamara considered all members of the family suspects, including mousy Gina. Viola Rudell is a suspect because she felt Shawn betrayed her when he took up with the Lennox sisters. The killing of Gina as she exits her car in front of the Lennox home eliminates her as a suspect and complicates Tamara’s theory of the case.

After she considers the three elements of solving a murder—motive, method, and opportunity—Tamara focuses on opportunity. About a fourth of the way into the novel, I guessed who was the killer and the motive. I continued reading because I wanted to see how Tamara would break the seemingly airtight alibi of the person she believed killed Shawn.

Don’t Talk To Strangers

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 11:40:00 +0000

In the detective novel, we watch the investigator practice the art of detection. When there is nothing to detect, it is not a detective novel. In Where Evil Sleeps, the third novel in Wesley’s Tamara Hayle series, our heroine’s problem is not finding a killer but how to avoid being accused of murder and, most importantly, escaping two men who think she has their money. The novel is, therefore, a thriller.

As I was reading the novel, I wanted to yell at Tamara, “girl, didn’t your grandma tell you don’t talk to strangers when she told you the devil would get his due?” On vacation in Kingston, Jamaica, she walks straight into trouble with her eyes wide open when she reluctantly accepts the invitation of young woman staying in the same hotel. Twenty-three-year-old Lilah Love persuades her to go to the Stamp and Go Club with her, her husband Sammy Lee Love, and his friend Delaware Brown.

Inside the club, Tamara immediately senses trouble brewing when she notices three teenage thugs profiling in their hoodies and baggy pants and three men standing at the bar, two black and one white. Lacey, one of the black men, is a friend of Delaware Brown, whom he will later involve in a scheme to steal a black bag full of money. Trouble starts when the heavy drinking Sammy Lee accuses Delaware and Lilah of having an affair. He also accuses Delaware of double-crossing him. Suddenly, the lights go out and shooting starts. Tamara dives under the table, wishing that she had listened to her grandma’s voice.

When the lights come back on, blood is dripping on the floor and the hem of her dress. She crawls from under the table and discovers that Sammy Lee is dead, stabbed through the heart. Lilah and Delaware are missing. So is her Kenya bag with her money, passport and identification in it. She realizes she is a suspect in Sammy Lee’s death. She’ll have to dodge the Kingston police while trying to figure how she is going to get back home to Newark. But first, she has to get out of the club and back to her hotel room.

Coincidentally, Basil Dupre, whom we met in When Death Comes Stealing, is in Jamaica to bury his mother. In Newark he was the bad boy type whom Tamara almost slept with. He rescues her from the club and takes her back to her hotel. His cousin who works at the hotel sneaks Tamara back into her room.

Soon after Tamara returns to her room, Lilah bangs on the door. She wants Tamara to come back with her to Delaware’s place to get what she claims is her money. Tamara, again against her better judgment, accompanies Lilah. In her search of the place, Tamara finds Delaware dead in the bathroom. She looks for Lilah and discovers she has escaped through an open window. Lilah’s disappearance means Tamara is the only person who can connect the two dead men.

Returning to her hotel room, Tamara follows two guys she suspects are cops to Lilah’s room. She can’t get inside, but she sees Lilah’s red panties and a dress lying on the floor and assumes she is dead. Back in her room, she receives a phone call from a man asking where is his money. She finally realizes she needs help immediately, and calls Basil. He takes her to a house in the mountains that belongs to his friend Noel. Although she is still pissed at him for lying to her about himself, she accepts his offer to help.

The house is where our heroine will confront the real evil who is also searching for the bag of money.

The long passages of description about her relationship with Basil slow the pace of Where Evil Sleeps. Upon first reading, I thought the scenes were padding, but after further consideration, I realized Basil’s appearance is a plot device used to give the sense of time passing. Wilson does not subordinate plot to an exploration of Basil's character. The slow pace builds suspense and forces us to wait for the climax when Tamara will face the evil.

I like Where Evil Sleeps for the action that doesn’t involve any detecting. We get to watch Tamara exhibit some physical skills in this action thriller.

The Bean Dip Murder Case

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 11:36:00 +0000

The major theme of crime novels, crime doesn’t pay, often serves as a foundation for examining social problems. The motifs involving such problems are what make the novels enjoyable. In her first Tamara Hayle novel, When Evil Comes Stealing, Valerie Wilson Wesley dealt with the relationship between fathers and sons. The Devil Gonna Get Him, the second novel in the series, is about the relationship between mothers and daughters.

Lincoln E. Storey, who rose from the mean streets of Newark to become one of the first black investment bankers on Wall Street, hires PI Tamara Hayle to follow a lady’s man named Brandon Pike and find out what game he’s playing. The thirty-year-old Pike is dating Lincoln’s 23-year-old stepdaughter Alexa. Storey suspects Pike is after his money.

Tamara once dated Pike after her divorce from DeWayne Curtis, but she doesn’t remember what he looks like. Storey suggests she attend a fundraiser he’s having for deputy District Attorney Stella Pharr who is running for a seat in the New Jersey state assembly. The affair will be held in the restaurant that Jackson Tate, an old friend of Tamara’s deceased father, manages.

Shortly after everyone sits down to eat, Lincoln E. Storey drops dead. At Pharr’s request, the authorities test the bean dip and discover that it contained peanut butter. The autopsy showed he died from an anaphylactic shock. Tasha Green, who prepared the bean dip, becomes the prime suspect. A month earlier at another dinner she suggested the perfect way to kill Storey would be to put some peanuts in his food.

What will Tamara do now that her client is dead? In need of money, she wonders if she can still collect the $1,000 fee. Her friend Wyvetta Green, Tasha’s older sister, comes to her rescue. She hires Tamara to find the real killer because she doesn’t believe Tasha did it. She can’t pay Tamara’s usual fee but she will pay what she can for a week of Tamara’s time. Tamara doesn’t like working for a friend, especially one who doesn’t have the money to pay her going rate. She needs the money, so she takes the case.

Each of the other five people who were present at the earlier gathering had a motive for killing Lincoln: his wife Daphne, though she claimed they were reconciled; his stepdaughter Alexa who just plain hated him, Pike who wants his money, Jackson Tate, whose restaurant Lincoln now owns, and Stella Pharr who might have had a romantic interest in him.

In Devil’s Gonna Get Him, we learn more about Tamara’s childhood. During the investigation, her observation of the volatile relationship between Daphne and Alexa triggers the dark memories of her abusive relationship with her own mother. Her mother was cruel and beat her in an attempt to knock all the black off. The normal and caring relationship between Wyvetta and Tasha is like that of mother and daughter since Wyvetta practically raised Tasha after their mother died, but this doesn’t change Tamara’s feelings toward her dead mother. She isn’t sure she can ever forgive her mother. The exploration into Tamara’s background adds complexity to her personality that makes her truly believable and increases the verisimilitude of the story.

The body count in Devil’s Gonna Get Him is down to only two, which makes for a tighter plot. The tighter plot makes it more difficult to identify the killer before the detective does. I haven’t named the second murder victim because it would spoil one of the surprises. This second novel in the series is as powerful and exciting as the first. I’m anxious to begin reading Where Evil Sleeps, the third novel in the series.

Who Is Killing His Sons

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Thu, 12 May 2016 12:54:00 +0000

Death Comes Stealing is the first novel in Valerie Wilson Wesley’s Tamara Hayle private detective series. Tamara is the single mother of a 14-year old son and an ex-policewoman who quit the force and opened her own private investigation business, the Hayle Investigative Services, Inc.

Tamara’s ex-husband, Dewayne Curtis, hires her to find out who might have killed his son Terrence. He suspects a conspiracy against him because his oldest son, DeWayne Junior, who lived in Virginia, was killed in a robbery on the same date, October 4, a year earlier. This was the first time she knew he had a son older than Terrence. He has been married five times and has sons by four of his legitimate wives and one, DeWayne Junior, by his common-law-wife. Tamara is the mother of his youngest son Jamal. His current wife is 22-year-old Carlotta who has no children but is a problem for Tamara and DeWayne.

Tamara is on talking terms with DeWayne but doesn’t trust him and isn’t too happy about his asking her to get involved in his mess. She was married to him for five years and never discovered how he earned his money. There was always something shady about him. Since the PI business hasn’t been too good lately, she needs the money, so she takes the case. Soon after taking the case, she finds herself investigating the death of two of his other sons while trying to protect Jamal.

After a thorough inspection of Terrence’s room in the boarding house where he lived, Tamara doesn’t accept drug overdose as the cause of his death. She becomes even more skeptical when DeWayne’s third son Gerard is found dead five days later in the bathtub in his paternal grandmother’s house. His death is ruled a drowning accident. Tamara’s friends Annie and Jake advise her to send DeWayne a bill and drop the case.

She considers doing so when, five days later, the fourth son, Hakim, is killed. His death is clearly murder since someone in a car shot him. Jamal was with him and witnessed the shooting but couldn’t identify the person in the car. Tamara, realizing Jamal is next and that she has five days to find the killer, travels to Salem, Virginia where DeWayne grew up to find the answers to why and who is killing his sons. In Salem, she discovers a lot about DeWayne that he never told her.

About a third of the way through the novel, I identified the killer. My guess wasn’t based on the clues but on the least likely suspect. Although I was right, I don’t like identifying the killer before the detective does. I don’t enjoy pitting my investigative skills against those of the detective. I prefer to watch the detective as she gathers and interprets the clues. I still however enjoyed the novel because I wanted to see what clues Tamara uncovered and how she would interpret them.

When Death Comes Stealing is the type of first novel that invites the reader to long for the other books in the series. Wesley’s conversational prose style makes the characters come alive. I felt Tamara Hayle was sitting across from me and telling me about her experience as a private detective. I didn’t learn as much about her background as I would have liked. Her brother Johnny committed suicide when she was in her teens, which continues to bother her. I look forward to discovering more of her backstory and watching her tangle with some bad people in the other novels in the series.

A bibliography of Wesley’s novels are on the Goodreads website. For more about her, you should visit the “About the Author” website here. And don’t forget to visit the font of all knowledge on the Internet, Wikipedia.

Shout out to Gary Phillips for his very informative article “The Unacknowledged: Black Crime Fiction, the Roaring ‘20s to the 1930s” in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

It’s Getting Harder

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 05:00:00 +0000

After I finished reading Robert Greer’s last novel, Spoon, I decided to step away from crime fiction and rest my aging brain. I have failed in the past few months to meet my self-imposed deadline for posting articles to my blog because, as I get older, it takes me longer to finish a book and then write my critical review. I reread some of my reviews for the past few months and discovered they are very bland.

I seemed to have more senior moments as I get older. I struggle these days to find the right words to express my thoughts. They don’t come as easily as they did when I was younger. They are, it seems, hiding in my brain, and when I search for them, they slip away, purposefully eluding me, hiding in a section that has nothing to do with language. This suggests that my writing, and possibly my reading, vocabulary has decreased, and continuous to do so. I’m still trying to find my voice. I want to abandon my academic voice and cultivate a conversational voice.

I cannot stop writing. Writing for me is an addiction.

In my reading of crime fiction by African American writers, I try to alternate between female and male. That is why Valerie Wilson Wesley is my next project beginning in May. After her, I plan to read the novels of Gary Phillips. I have only one of his novels in my library. So, I’ll be buying some of his other novels while reading Wesley.

According to the winter 2016 edition of Mystery Scene Magazine, the Mystery Writers of America chose Walter Moseley as the 2016 Grand Master. Good for him. I hope someday to finish reading his huge body of work.

The Prognosticator

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 11:59:00 +0000

Spoon, Dr. Robert Greer's twelfth novel, which is not a part of his CJ Floyd series, is a coming of age story using a western-type plot set in the 20th century. Instead of cattlemen against homesteaders, it’s ranchers versus an energy corporation. The Acota Coroporation wants the coal and natural gas beneath the ranches, especially the rich coal deposits beneath the Willow Creek Ranch.

The story opens in the autumn of 1991 in Hardin, Big Horn County, Montana. TJ Darley, the 19-year-old narrator, picks up a hitchhiker “wearing a $250 5X Resistol cowboy hat and no shoes.” The hitchhiker, whose name is Arcus Witherspoon, prefers to be called Spoon. He is “part-black, part-Indian cowboy searching for his roots.” Although Spoon has just been fired from a ranch, TJ offers him a job working on the Darley’s Willow Creek Ranch, but he must convince his skeptical father to hire him. To convince Bill Darley that he can do a good days work, Spoon negotiates a deal. He says he can cut a 180-acre field of alfalfa, bale the alfalfa, pick up the bales and stack them “neat as a pin” in 24 hours. Bill Darley says it’s impossible. Twenty-four hours later Spoon has the job.

It’s not long before Spoon senses a problem the Darleys are having, which, to TJ, proves he is clairvoyant. “Easy” Ed Koffman, representative of the Acota Energy Corporation, visits and again tries to get the Darleys to sell. Again they refuse, and he warns them he will get what he wants. Spoon sees Koffman leaving and, sizing up the man, warns the Darleys that trouble is coming. Bill Darley doesn't think Spoon is a prognosticator, but his wife Marva and TJ do after Acota Energy Corporation buys the neighboring ranches, leaving the Darleys to fight Acota alone.

While helping the Darleys fight off Ed Koffman and his muscle Matt Rodue, whom he sees as a physical threat, Spoon continues to search for his roots. His grandfather was one of the Buffalo soldiers who settled somewhere in the west and married an Indian woman. However, he isn’t sure to which tribe his grandmother belonged.

Spoon is a feel good story showing that individuals can fight city hall, or, specifically, a big, powerful corporation. At first, like Bill Darley, I was skeptical about Spoon because his prognostications were so obvious. He had lost his land in Ohio and deduced from his keen observation of people that Acota Energy Corporation was trouble. Then I realized I was seeing him through the 19-year-old eyes of TJ, who idealizes him. For TJ, Spoon had “a special gift he called charm. A gift that he used to help me and my family rescue our lives and way of life before he moved on.”

Although I enjoyed the novel, it didn’t engage me as Greer’s other novels did. I felt it is the type of novel one reads to relax and not have to think. Maybe Greer wrote the novel to get away for a while from CJ Floyd. Spoon is certainly easier on the nerves.

The Sweetness of Revenge

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 13:10:00 +0000

I struggled to write my review of Astride A Pink Horse, Dr. Robert Greer’s eleventh novel and the fourth outside his CJ Floyd series. Greer uses the conventional detective story to explore the hatred of the United States government for its nuclear weapons policy and the taking of land from ranchers. This made it difficult for me to write the review without spoiling the surprise ending.

In the first chapter, a US postal worker finds the mutilated body of African American ex-Air Force sergeant Thurmond Giles hanging by his heels in the access tunnel of an abandon nuclear missile site in Wyoming called Tango-11. Giles was an expert nuclear missile technician and a womanizer.

Beautiful OSI (Office of Special Investigations) Air Force Major Bernadette Cameron is assigned to investigate the breach but not the murder. She is the granddaughter of one of the Tuskegee Airmen and the daughter of an Air Force pilot who fought in Vietnam. She was reassigned from duty as an A-10 Warthog pilot to OSI because hay fever grounded her. Having to obey the orders of her ambitious superior officer, Colonel DeWitt, rankles her. He orders her to investigate only the breach at the abandon missile site and leave the murder investigation to the civilian authorities. She, naturally, disobeys because she thinks the two are connected.

Any time there is a beautiful woman in a story, you know there has to be a handsome man to romance her. Detective novels are no different in this respect from other genres. Elgin Delonero (Cozy) Coseia, an investigator reporter for the web-based Digital Registry News, which his friend Frederick Dames owns, is her love interest and together they investigate the murder of Giles. Though their relationship is predictable, they are complex characters whose emotional demons evoke just the right amount of sympathy without being sentimental.

Trying to stop one of the suspects from exploding a nuclear device on Los Alamos briefly distracts Bernadette and Cozy and the reader from solving the Giles murder. To further complicate their investigation even further, one of the suspects is murdered.

Each of the five suspects, two women and three men, has a reason for wanting Giles dead. Giles was the love’em and leave’em type of womanizer. The question facing the two enterprising investigators is was the motive racial hate, antinuclear protest, jealousy, or the US Government’s taking of land to build nuclear missile bases? One of the men is angry that the US Government took his land in Nevada and another that Giles had an affair with his wife. Two Japanese cousins, a man and a woman, are angry that the government dropped atomic bombs on Japan. The other woman is angry that Giles’s affair with her mother might have caused her mother’s death. The relationship among the suspects and their connections to Giles is more complex than I have suggested. Although he is dead, his presence haunts the plot right up to when one suspect tries to blow up Los Alamos. To say more would be a spoiler.

Astride A Pink Horse is a well-written novel of revenge.

Super Roosters

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 02 Jan 2016 14:01:00 +0000

In my first review of 2016, I continue with Dr. Robert Greer’s tenth novel, Heat Shock. Black Amerasian Doctor Carmen Nguyen is the heroine of Heat Shock, Doctor Robert Greer’s third medical thriller. The novel was published in 2003 two years before Resurrecting Langston Blue (2005) in which Dr. Nguyen finds her African American father. I read Shock after Langston because it is not a part of the CJ Floyd series. Greer’s other two medical thrillers are The Devil’s Hat Band (first novel in Floyd series) and Limited Time (which isn’t part of the series though Floyd plays a part in the plot).

Dr. Nguyen, a research oncologist, was forced to leave her job at Utah University after blowing the whistle on top level administrators who were skimming money from grants. She now works in the ER in St. Mary’s Hospital in Denver where she meets the two men who will involve her in the dangerous culture of cockfighting.

She treats Luke Redstone, a Navajo and Korean War veteran, for cancer he contracted working in the uranium mines. She also treats Walker Rios, an ex-marine intelligent officer during the Persian Gulf War and now river guide, for head and shoulder injuries he suffered in a fall into the river. After they are moved from the emergency room, both men insist that Carmen continue to treat them.

Redstone knows he is dying and asks Carmen to check on his roosters. She ventures into the mountains where he has hidden his roosters to keep other owners from stealing them. As she approaches the place, someone takes a shot at her. She later learns that Redstone’s roosters are famous on the cockfighting circuit for never having lost a fight. They are considered to be “super chickens.”

Someone doesn’t want anyone around Redstone’s roosters, and Carmen, Rios and Redstone want to know who and why. The next time Carmen ventures into Redstone’s hiding place, Rios accompanies her. What they find puzzles them: some of the roosters are missing and the remaining ones are dead.

The answer lies with the rich and powerful Jack Kimbrough, a physicist and financier who made his money through some questionable financial deals. He is researching the heat shock protein (HSP90) because it helps species withstand physical stress. He uses Navajos, whose fathers worked in the uranium mines and passed the protein onto their sons, to determine if the HSP90 in their blood will protect them against fire. The Navajos believe they are practicing to become firefighters. If the experiment works, Kimbrough envisions a future in which he produces super soldiers and “in six months...bring world powers...knocking on his door.” He believes Redstone’s super roosters hold the key to unlock the super protein.

In addition to finding out why Kimbrough wants Redstone’s super Roosters, Carmen and Rios also must deal with Kimbrough’s dangerous enforcer Roland Septian who tries to stop them.

Although Heat Shock is a medical thriller, it has its share of dead bodies, four to be exact. In case you’re wondering, yes, the heat shock protein is real. The heat shock protein is a trouble-shooting gene that causes humans and animals to develop physical changes which help withstand stress. Rios defines the heat shock protein in layman’s terms as “A building block capable of making humans invincible”

Dr. Greer uses his knowledge of the biological sciences to weave an exciting tale of human gene manipulation for control and power. I enjoyed Heat Shock more than I did Time Limit. Unlike the plot Time Limit, the Heat Shock plot is tighter and well controlled with no wasted scenes.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year.

It’a My Vacation Reading Month

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 05 Dec 2015 12:32:00 +0000

As I take my vacation from reading crime fiction, mostly to rest my mind from the fictional violence, I plan to read two novels.

The first is Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth, his second novel, which he was still working on when he died in 1994. His literary executor, with the help Ellison’s widow, edited the novel, which was published 1999. The title is a reference to June 19, 1865, the date abolition of slavery was announced in Texas. The date became Juneteenth, a holiday many of us African Americans celebrate on June 19.

The second novel is Edgar Allan Poe’s Narrative of A. Gordon Pym. I don’t remember why I chose Poe’s novel. I think it’s because I read most of his short stories but neglected to read the novel during my Poe phase.

My family and I wish all of you a MERRY CHRISTMAS.

Deadly Research

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 21 Nov 2015 16:44:00 +0000

Published in 2000 between The Devil’s Backbone (1998) and Resurrecting Langston Blue (2005), Robert Greer's novel, LIMITED TIME, isn’t a volume in the CJ Floyd series. CJ Floyd plays an important part in the plot, but his long time friend from their days in Vietnam, Dr. Henry Bales, raises the tension. CJ has Henry’s back in this exciting scientific research thriller.

The body of microbiologist Neil Cardashian is found in the city waste dump in a lab freezer belonging to microbiologist Dr. Theresa Gilliam. Cardashian was supposedly trying to develop an anti-aging pill based on the telomerase enzyme. Dr. Gilliam, the co-investigator, noting he was not following protocol, was trying to determine what he was up to. Homicide detective Lieutenant Clifford Menton considers her the prime suspect because, he thinks, she will benefit if the project is successful.

During Menton’s intensive questioning, Henry, head of pathology and chief of diagnostic molecular biology at the University of Colorado, gets in his face and is in danger of being arrested himself. Dr. Gilliam was his mentor when he was studying medicine and is his close friend. Lucky for him attorney Julie Madrid, CJ’s ex-secretary, is present. She calls CJ to come calm Henry down. Once he has calmed Henry down and persuaded him to leave, CJ turns his attention to Dr. Gilliam, who hires him to find Cardashian’s killer.

Dr. Gilliam is eliminated as a suspect when she is found dead sitting in her wheelchair in her lab. Henry vows to find her killer, but CJ persuades him to look for a motive that might have something to do with Cardashian’s research and leave the dangerous killer hunting to him.

In Cardashian’s office, CJ finds a box of Cuban cigars. Beneath the cigars are pearl-sized gel beads. Henry’s analysis reveals the gel beads are a telomerase concoction. CJ suggests maybe Cardashian was doing something other than trying to develop a longevity pill.

From the coroner’s attendant, a friend of CJ’s, Henry and CJ learn the autopsies of the brains of Leah Tanner, an olympic swimmer on the University of Colorado swim team, and Cardashian revealed pea-sized nodules. Henry concludes that both died from brain cancer due to overdoses of the telomerase gel beads.

Their joint investigation soon leads them to four possible suspects involved with the university swim team: Leah’s boyfriend Anthony Montella, Leah’s father Nathan Tanner, the swim team doctor, David Patterson, and the coach Ellis Drake. CJ eliminates all in the death of Theresa because none had a reasonable motive. Henry refuses to accept that Anthony Rontella couldn’t be the killer because he had the most to lose since he was peddling the telomerase drug to coaches. Henry goes to his ranch in La Plata County with his lady friend Dr. Sandra Artorio to do more work on the telomerase puzzle.

What Henry and CJ don’t know is a mysterious voice on the phone using the name Sweets is the master mind behind whatever Cardashian was doing. Sweets orders Jamie Lee Custus, a hit woman working for her, to eliminate Henry and Dr. Arotrio who are close to solving the telomerase puzzle. She follows them to Henry’s ranch and attacks them. CJ and a neighboring rancher arrive just in time to rescue Henry and Sandra. Right behind them is Sheriff Booker Reardon. He takes over the situation and learns from Custus that she was to meet Sweets at the airport in Durango, Colorado. The sheriff agrees to let Henry and CJ watch the proceedings at the airport but warns them not to interfere. Henry is the most important person in the group when they arrive at the airport because he is the only one who can identify Sweets.

As I struggled to write this review, my critical antenna began to zero in on what bothered me about the novel. The structure is not tight as it should be. Although I didn’t mentioned them in the summary, scenes set in Cuba designed to set up the cigar box clue and identify relationships among some of the Cuban characters could have been left out without disturbing the flow of the plot.

A Novel in Three Acts

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 11:11:00 +0000

Robert Greer’s eighth novel, First of State, in his CJ Floyd series, is the first prequel novel I’ve ever read. It made me wonder why the series didn’t begin with this prequel novel that describes how CJ Floyd became a bail bondsman, bounty hunter, and amateur detective. As I read the novel, I didn’t discover anything new about his personality that Greer had not already revealed in the previous seven novels.

First of State, divided into three parts, reads like the first novel of an author trying to make sure the plot has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In Part 1 CJ returns home to Denver in 1971 after serving two tours in Vietnam as a Gunners Mate First Class manning a .50 caliber machine gun on a patrol boat in the Mekong River Delta. He struggles to adjust to civilian life. With the help of Wiley Ames, an ex-alcoholic who lost an arm in WWII, he Partially rids himself of the Vietnam nightmares.

His Uncle Ike also helps. He asks CJ to join him in the bail bond business and teaches him how to be a bounty hunter and investigator. CJ applies the investigative lessons in finding out who killed Billy Larkin, the son of Ike’s longtime lady friend Marguerite. CJ also feels an obligation to investigate the murder of Ames and Ames’s friend Quan Lee Chin. The killings are referred to as the GI Joe’s murders because the two men were killed behind GI Joe’s Pawnshop where Ames worked.

In Part 2, five years later, CJ has settled into civilian life. He becomes the protector of the residences in the black community of Five Points where he grew up. If anyone has a problem with bad guys, he steps in to correct the situation. He receives no money for his services until Willis Sundee, a prominent businessman, asks him to talk to a man named Walt Reasoner from whom Willis and other Five Points small businessmen buy their produce. Reasoner is shaking down small businessmen in Five Points. Since the large produce suppliers refuse to sell to the small businesses because it’s unprofitable, Reasoner is the only supplier. He raises his prices, and anyone who refuses to pay could go out of business, end up seriously injured or dead. Willis offers to pay CJ to stop the unscrupulous Reasoner, and CJ accepts the job. He still thinks about the GI Joe’s murders.

Part 3 continues the main plot with CJ pursuing the GI Joe’s murders against the advice of his friend Rosie Weeks and Uncle Ike. Petey Greene, CJ’s friend from grade school, is killed because he has been following and watching Gaylord Marquee for CJ. He suspects Marquee might be involved in the murders. CJ now has three murders to solve: Wiley Ames, Quan Lee Chin, and Petey Greene. Petey’s mother Syrathia pays him $500 to find Petey’s killer. CJ feels he owes it to Petey to catch his killer and doesn’t want to take her money. However, a look from Uncle Ike says take the money because not to do so would insult her. The clue to the murders is in the pictures Petey took of a Quonset hut belonging to Gaylord Marquee.

Bland describes First of State. The novel had no emotional effect on me. Nothing is unexpected. Everything that happens is predictable. Parts 1 and 2 are mini-plots that develop the character of CJ Floyd but add nothing to the main plot. In the first two parts CJ is advised to give up his search for the GI Joe’s murderers, which keeps the main plot in the reader’s mind but doesn’t necessarily advance the plot. CJ never explains why he feels obligated to solve the murders of a man he knew for only two days and a man he knew not at all.

CJ is a collector, especially of state license plates. The title, First of State, refers to the first license plates issued in a state.

As always, I suggest you read the novel and draw your own conclusion. You might enjoy it even if I didn’t.

Human Predators

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 05 Sep 2015 11:33:00 +0000

In the bird kingdom, large predator birds prey on smaller birds. The same holds true in the human species. Human predators prey on the vulnerable in our society for their personal gain. In Blackbird, Farewell, the seventh novel in his CJ Floyd series, Robert Greer explores how young, vulnerable athletic phenoms are always in danger of being corrupted by unscrupulous individuals who falsely display an interest in their careers.

Shortly after signing a 3.5 million dollar contract with the Denver Nuggets who picked him second in the NBA draft and a 4 million dollar shoe contract with Nike, 22-year-old basketball phenom Shandell Bird is shot and killed. Two-seconds later the reporter he was meeting on an outdoor basketball court is also killed.

The bail bondsman and sometime amateur detective CJ Floyd and his new bride, his long time girl friend, Mavis Sundee, are on their honeymoon in Hawaii. In his absence, Damion Madrid, the 22-year-old son of CJ’s former secretary, decides to find out who murdered his best friend since grad school. He also wants to disprove the rumor that Shandell sold performance-enhancing drugs and was involved in a point-shaving scheme while attending Colorado State University. An inexperienced 22-year-old wannabe detective trying to be like his idol CJ Floyd naturally puts himself in a dangerous situation.

Suspects are plentiful. Shandell’s father, Leon Bird, who left Shandell and his mother when Shandell was only 6-years-old, shows up for some father-son bonding. He will receive $250,000 from the insurance policy he persuaded Shandell to take out.

Shandell’s white girlfriend Connie Eastland saw him as “her little lapdog,” and “booster rocket to the good life.” She helped the gentleman mobster Asalon Garrett persuade Shandell to shave points on some games.

Professor Alicia Phillips, a sports psychologist, treated Shandell. She was planning to use the information about him and other athletes to write a tell-all book about college athletes, hoping for a bestseller.

Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Wordell Epps also was hoping to profit from the book.

Asalon Garrett doesn’t want Shandell to reveal his illegal gambling operation.

Rodney Sands, the CSU trainer, persuaded Shandell to be his mule delivering drugs to Leotis Hawkins to sell in the Five Points neighborhood.

Jackie Woodson, point guard on the CSU team, was in on the point-shaving scheme and used performance-enhancing drugs given to him by Sands.

Each one of the suspects expected to profited off Shandell’s fame. So, why would any one of them want to kill the proverbial goose is the question Damion must answer if he is to find the killer.

Although he learns surprising things about his best friend Shandell nothing differentiates Damion from other headstrong 22-year-olds. This makes him a generic character, and no major character in a novel should be generic. Minor characters yes, major no. I confess I’m biased when it comes to 22-year-olds with little experience in life investigating murder. Such young men don’t make good detectives.

I enjoyed the novel despite my bias and the fact I identified the killer about halfway through. Greer’s deft handling of a very sensitive subject kept me reading. To say what the subject is would be a spoiler for it would reveal the secret that drives the plot.

In TV series when the central character gets married, you know that is the end of the series. This may also be true of a detective series in novels. If so, CJ's marriage to Mavis signals an end to the CJ Floyd series. However, Greer published a prequel, First of State, so I guess it’s fair to say the eighth novel is the last in the series. Yes, I’ll review it next month.

Interlude

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 05:30:00 +0000

I finished the novel Death and Mr Pickwick, and you can read my review on the SleuthSayers blog. In September, I’ll return to my reviews of Robert Greer’s novels featuring his amateur detective, the bail bondsman/antique dealer, CJ Floyd.

I hope you all had a wonderful summer and read a lot of books.

Invisible but They Exist

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 04 Jul 2015 05:00:00 +0000

I often surf the Internet for reviews and critical articles about black crime writers. Sometimes I get lucky and stumble on an article that hits home with me. That is how I came across “Colored and Invisible” by Rachel Howzell Hall on the “The Life Sentence” website.

In her post, She observes

”If you’re a writer of color and you attend Bouchercon, Malice Domestic, or any of the writing conferences, you already know that there are more robots on Mars than there are colored folks in the banquet room.

Weird because the mystery genre has always been a great equalizer — you can’t get more equal than dead. And mystery writers are the ones who call out social ills and inequities. We kill the bad guys. But when it comes to diversity in the real-life room? Yeah, we have a problem.”

The absence of black nominees for the many awards for crime fiction certainly isn’t due to a lack of books by black writers. I have run out of room on my bookshelves and now put the books I buy in boxes on the floor. I sometimes have a difficult time finding reviews of books by black writers, but they are reviewed. In fact, Ms Hall’s novel Skies of Ash was reviewed in the June 21, 2015, New York Times Book Review. Why no black attendees and no black winners? As Ms Hall suggests, they are invisible to the white folks who select the attendees and nominees.

But, I’m optimistic things will get better. I say this because, when I was growing up the 1940s and 1950s, black writers in any genre were not a part of the curriculum in the segregated school system. They weren’t invisible, for invisibility means you’re present but not seen. They didn’t exist as far as the white school officials were concerned. Oh, we black kids knew about some of them, especially Langston Hughes, my favorite even today. We knew because during Black History Week (yes, it was only a week long before it became a month long) our teachers, not the white school officials, required us to study Negro history, including literature.

I didn’t know black crime writers existed until I entered college and read Chester Himes’s novels and Rudolph Fisher’s only detective novel, The Conjure-Man Dies. In the 1980s black writers entered the genre of crime fiction with amazing productivity. So, I’m optimistic they will sometime in this century attend the writing conferences and be nominated for and possibly win some of the awards. Ms Hall’s presence at the Bouchercon is evidence that my optimism is not misplaced.

During the era of Jim Crow in the south, the one thing that our teachers and parents and leaders inspired in us was hope. No matter how bed things were, we would overcome.

As Ms Hall points out, the mystery genre is an equalizer.

Now go celebrate the Fourth of July!

Curtesy of Hubpages

I Won a Prize

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 11:41:00 +0000

I’m taking a break from reading Robert Greer’s novels because I won a prize given by SleuthSayers blog. In the April 12, 2015 post (you can read the post here), Mr. Stephen Jarvis explains why he wrote the novel Death And Mr. Pickwick. I was given an Advanced Reader Copy as a prize for my comment on his post. I’m about half through the 802 page novel. It’ll probably take me a couple of months to finish it. In July and August I’ll post a thought or two on my blog but no reviews or critical articles.

The Last Man Standing

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 02 May 2015 13:01:00 +0000

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

On November 22, 1963, an assassin shot and killed President John F. Kennedy. The assassination generated several conspiracies theories: it was the CIA; it was Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, it was Cuban President Fidel Castro; it was the KGB; and it was the Mafia. In his sixth CJ Floyd novel, THE MONGOOSE DECEPTION, Robert Greer suggests it might have been the Mafia and “The High Cabal” of 11 men who "were the power behind government and corporations and organized crime."

Greer’s bail bondsman/antique dealer, CJ Floyd, gets involved in the conspiracy theory that the Mafia assassinated President John F. Kennedy when some 30 years after the Eisenhower Tunnel was completed in the 1970s a frozen arm is found behind the tunnel wall following an earthquake. Based on the tattoo on the arm, Cornelius McPherson, the worker who found the arm, identified it as belonging to a fellow worker named Antoine Ducane who disappeared in 1972. Cornelius is later killed when he attempts to locate Antoine’s next of kin. The gruesome find and the McPherson killing set in motion a series of events that everyone involved thinks might lead to the real JFK assassin.

CJ tries to protect his long time friend, 86-year-old, former Denver mob boss Mario Satoni, the last Mafioso who might have knowledge of the assassination. The three mob bosses who allegedly planned the operation are dead. Once evidence connects Antoine Ducane to the assassination, an FBI agent goes after Mario Satoni. Mario’s nephew Rollie Ornasetti, who supervised a failed assassination attempt in Chicago in 1963, tries to frame Mario. Carmine Cassias, the young boss of the Louisiana crime family, wants Satoni and Rollie dead for fear they will reveal the Mafia’s role in the assassination.

As he searches for the hitman Rollie sends to kill Satoni, CJ finds himself working with Satoni’s enforcer Pinkie Niedermyer and Gus Cavalaris, the Denver Homicide detective investigating the murders of Ducane and McPherson. Eighty-year-old Willette Ducane travels to Denver from Louisiana and hires CJ to find out what happened to her son Antoine.

The unknown villains manipulating events behind the scene don’t want the truth about the assassination revealed either. CJ, however, believes he might change history: "…I think we might have stumbled across something that could put a new twist on history." He thinks he “can shed just a little bit of truth on that killing…”

The Mongoose Deception is a good “what if” novel. What if it was the Mafia and some leaders in industry and government who wanted President John F. Kennedy dead? The novel is an entertaining fantasy with unknown villains manipulating the known villains. Greer does a good job of keeping the plot tight, not going off on a tangent exploring other theories.

If you are a member of a “who killed JFK” conspiracy club you will enjoy The Mongoose Deception more than the previous five novels.

The Bizarre Game

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 18 Apr 2015 00:21:00 +0000

I chose the title of this review based on the game a rich man plays in Robert Greer's fifth novel in his CJ Floyd series. To reveal the nature of the game my faithful readers would be a spoiler. However, It’s not a spoiler to tell you that the dangerous game in which the ex-bail bondsman CJ Floyd finds himself involves four photographs of the Golden Spike Ceremony depicting the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. The fourth photograph is The Fourth Perspective.

As he promised his lady friend Mavis Sundee, CJ is no longer a bail bondsman. He sold the business to his partner Flora Jean Benson. He is now an antique dealer. His new business, IKE'S SPOT: VINTAGE WESTERN COLLECTIBLES, is named after the uncle who raised him.

From his first customer, Luis Del Mora, a young Nicaraguan man, CJ buys two rare books he suspects Luis probably stole from a private library. One is about Wyoming cattle brands in 1883. The second is about the history of medicine in Colorado. Evidence that something was attached to the back end board of the second book incites CJ’s curiosity. In satisfying his curiosity, he learns that the antique business is almost as dangerous as the bail bond business.

CJ’s excitement over obtaining the two books is deflated when Denver homicide detective, Sergeant Fritz Commons, visits the store and informs him the young Nicaraguan man was found dead in an alley. Commons confiscates the two books as evidence. He visits CJ again a few days later and asks him about another dead man, Oliver Lyman, a professor of American History at the community college. Luis had been one of his students. Luis’s mother, Theresa, wants to hire CJ to find her son’s killer. Having quit the bail bond business, he refers her to his former partner Flora Jean.

Stolen books, two dead men, and a grieving mother put CJ back in the business of doing what he loves—chasing bad guys—when Flora Jean asks for his help. He dreads having to explain to Mavis why he is again chasing bad guys:

He still hadn't been able to figure out exactly where he was now headed in life, but he suspected that sooner or later a proper choice would surface. He hadn't fully abandoned the idea of continuing in the antiques business, but he knew for certain now that he couldn't completely turn his back on being a bail bondsman. He had no idea how he'd combine the two polar-opposite careers, but with Mavis's hesitant blessing, he was going to try.

To find the killer, CJ must find the owner of the two rare books he bought from Luis. His research revealed that the item that was attached to the end board of the medical book was a daguerreotype photograph of the Golden Spike Ceremony worth millions of dollars. The hunt for the killer leads to a confrontation with a “wealthy oil and gas baron, whose Western lineage stretched back to before Colorado's 1876 statehood...." Howard Stafford is a serious collector of books and owns an extensive library. To him, the conflict with CJ is a game he warns CJ he will lose.

Stafford is not the only danger CJ faces. His deadly nemesis, Celeste Deepstream, reappears just as I expected. After escaping from CJ when he rescued Mavis from her clutches in Resurrecting Langston Blue, she returns for another try at killing him. With her third appearance I realized her stalking of CJ adds tension to the story—no matter what case he’s on, he will always worry about when and where she will strike.

The former boss of the Denver mafia family, Mario Satoni, who was a friend of CJ’s uncle Ike, offers him a way to work as a bail bondsman and an antique dealer. If CJ comes into the antique business with him, he would “get to spend part of his time with Flora Jean doing what you’ve always done and the rest over here with me offering antiques and collectibles for sale—and a little protection.” Will CJ accept the offer? Read the next novel to find out.

The plot of The Fourth Perspective is much tighter than Greer’s previous three novels, which shows he is getting better at telling CJ’s stories. Best of all, we watch CJ develop over time. Unlike some detectives, he has personal problems, especially in the romance department.

The Army Deserter

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 07 Mar 2015 05:00:00 +0000

Resurrecting Langston Blue, the fourth novel in Robert Greer’s CJ Floyd series, is filled with some real nasty people in its exploration of an atrocity an American army special forces team called Star 1 might have committed during the Vietnam war.

After his cabin in the woods of West Virginia is blown up, army deserter Langston Blue knows he is a marked man. The two men who helped him get back to the United States from Vietnam and paid him $20,000 a year for 30 years now consider him a liability. In his pocket is a letter from a daughter in Denver whom he never knew existed.

The daughter, Carmen Nguyen, knows about her father because her aunt Ket, her mother’s sister, knew what happened to him based on what her sister Mimm, Blue’s Vietnam wife, told her. For 30 years, Ket kept the post office box number for him that Mimm had given her. Carmen hires CJ Floyd and his partner Flora Jean Benson to find her father. Before they can get on a plane to West Virginia, Langston Blue arrives in Denver. After they hear his story, CJ, Flora Jean, and Julie, CJ’s former secretary who is now a lawyer, take on the job of proving Langston wasn’t a deserter.

The murder of Democratic senatorial candidate Peter Margolin complicates Langston’s situation. Margolin was Langston's commanding officer of the Star 1 team of which Langston was a member. Five members of the team were killed on the last mission. Since Langston was one of the survivors, he becomes the prime suspect in Margolin’s murder. The three detectives must unravel a conspiracy surrounding the Star 1 team to clear Langston.

Two people complicate CJ’s attempt to clear Langston. The first is his former high school rival Lieutenant Wendall Newburn the homicide detective investigating the case who was a rival for Mavis Sundee’s affections. He still carries a grudge because Mavis Sundee picked CJ instead of him, and he isn’t too fond of Flora Jean.

The second is Celeste Deepstream. In The Devil’s Backbone, she vowed vengeance on CJ for sending her twin brother Bobby Two-shirts back to prison where he died. After serving five years in prison for killing bail bondsman Cicero Vickers she is released on parole. She returns to Denver with one thing on her mind—kill CJ Floyd. She decides the best way to get to him is through his ladylove Mavis Sundee. This parallel plot makes the novel longer than it should be and contributes nothing to the main plot. I expect to see her in the next novel.

In Resurrecting Langston Blue, CJ faces a dilemma I also expect to be resolved in the next novel. Mavis wants him to quit the dangerous bail bond business. He thinks about quitting and going into selling antiques. The dilemma adds depth to his personality, which I expect to observe becoming more complex over time.

Greer doesn’t describe in detail the pulsating life of Five Points so that you feel the heart and soul of the black community, but he does show in generic terms its ongoing decline:

The Points, the core of Denver's black community since early in the twentieth century, was a neighborhood in transition. Urban gentrification and increasing ethnic diversity were becoming more obvious every day. Longtime shades of black were making way for every color in the rainbow.

Greer again provides a history of black cowboys. Nat Love was one of the six black cowboys who participated in the Fourth of July Celebration in Deadwood City, South Dakota in 1876. He won the shooting contest and earned the nickname “Deadwood Dick.” (Reference: The Black West by William Loren Katz. A Touchtone Book, published by Simon & Shuster Inc. Copyright 1987, 1996 by Ethrac Publications, Inc. ISBN 0-684-81478-1)

Although I think Resurrecting Langston Blue is about 100 pages too long, it is a well-plotted novel and shows that character and plot are inseparable.

The Dead Man in the Water Trough

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 05:00:00 +0000

The setting of the main action In The Devil’s Backbone, the third novel in Robert Greer’s CJ Floyd series, is in the area of the hogback referred to as “the Devil’s Backbone.” It is an ugly, brutal rock formation in Larimer County, Colorado that CJ’s uncle described as “a modern-day gargoyle, strategically placed at the mouth of the canyon to warn all who entered to beware.”

Hambone Dolbey, an ex-bull rider who mentored Morgan Williams, is found dead in a water trough dressed in a wet suit at the Greeley Stampede. Morgan and his friend Dittier Atkins ask the bounty hunting bail bondsman, CJ Floyd, to find the killer. CJ knows the two old rodeo cowboys don’t have the money to pay him. But because they once saved his life, he takes the case. I won’t spoil the story by telling you how they paid him, which surprised CJ and me.

CJ’s main adversaries in this adrenalin pulsating novel are Whitaker Rodgers, President of Pandeco Oil and Gas Company, his mother Virginia Rodgers, CEO of the company, and his girl friend Evelyn Coleman, chief engineer. Hambone had an arrangement with Whitaker Rodgers for an easement across Hambone’s property in the area around The Devil’s Backbone to where Whitaker believed diamonds were located on Pandeco property. Unknown to CJ, another player is Hambone’s son Aaron Baptiste and his mother Rebecca, whom Hambone got pregnant when she was a 15-year-old groupie. The final showdown between CJ and his many adversaries near The Devil’s Backbone increases the adrenalin high for CJ, Flora Jean, and the reader.

Bounty hunting becomes very dangerous when the hunter becomes the prey. Celeste Deepstream begins stalking CJ after he returns her bond-skipping twin brother Bobby Two-shirts to jail. CJ doesn't take seriously Bobby’s warning that Celeste will get even with him until an unknown assailant attacks him in his garage.

In addition to looking over his shoulder for Celeste and investigating Hambone’s death, CJ has to deal with Sheriff Carlton Pritchard whom he remembers from the time the sheriff helped take down a group of ecoterrorists. Sheriff Pritchard warns him not to interfere in the Hambone case. When Hambone’s girlfriend Nadine Kemp is killed, CJ thinks the two deaths are connected. Sheriff Pritchard again warns him not to interfere. Of course CJ doesn’t heed the warnings.

Meanwhile, CJ also deals with two personal problems not connected to the case. While his Puerto Rican secretary Julie is studying for her bar examination, she hires a six-foot, black female ex-marine named Flora Jean Benson to work as his secretary. His biggest worry, however, is how to explain to his girl friend Mavis that he has to postpone their vacation to New Mexico.

The novel has one glaring flaw. Neither CJ nor Sheriff Pritchard investigates why Hambone who was afraid of going into the water was wearing a wetsuit. If they had done so, they might have discovered the motive for the murder early on in the investigation. This failure of the investigators and their author do not spoil the enjoyment of the tight, action-filled plot.

Like most black crime fiction writers, Greer shows the history of black folks in the part of the country where his stories take place. In The Devil’s Backbone, he mentions Myrtis Dightman who “In 1966…became the first black cowboy to qualify for the Professional Rodeo Association National Finals.” Hambone was a contemporary of Dightman’s.

Rambling Thoughts On This and That

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sun, 04 Jan 2015 13:55:00 +0000

As I kiss the old year goodbye and welcome the New Year, my mind rambles like boogie-woogie, searching for, well, I don’t know what it’s searching for.

When I first began writing this blog in 2007, I searched the Internet for blogs and websites on crime and mystery fiction by African American writers, and ones in which the stories, though written by White writers, featured Black protagonist. For this post I searched for new websites and found at least two that might interest you, dear reader: Myst Noir is devoted to “African-American Mysteries: Mysteries written by African-Americans and/or featuring African-American sleuth.” You can also find links to authors, books, and mystery websites African American mystery writers on Angela Henry’s website.

The Evanston Library in Evanston, Illinois has a list of African American mystery writers and their novels for readers who, like me, are interested in African American crime and mystery fiction.

I rarely mention my pet peeves in this blog. Well, I feel the need to do so because this one has bedeviled me for years. I hate the book reviews and columns that, at the end of each year, list the best books of the year, the best books of the century, and the must read list of classics. My question is this: do the people who make the best this or that list read all the books published in a year or the century? No, they don’t. Now, I don’t mind someone telling me what books they liked during the year or even what books they enjoyed in the past century, but don’t tell me that the books were the best.

By the way, why doesn’t someone list the worst books of the year? I read a list last month about the worst movies, why not one listing the worst books?

A reminder: drop by my old stomping ground the SleuthSayers blog.

In February, I’ll return to Denver, Colorado to see what new devil the bounty hunting bails bondsman, CJ (Calvin Jefferson) Floyd, is facing.

My Vacation Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 06 Dec 2014 13:42:00 +0000

As you know, in December I take a vacation from reading crime fiction so I can read some literary fiction or popular fiction.

What I’m reading this December: An e-novel, Dark Genesis by A. D. Koboah, which I’m reading on my iPad Mini.

The other two are print books:

As you know, I’m a contributor to the website SleuthSayers. Well, I’ll post my last contribution to the site this month. Beginning January, I’ll devote my time exclusively to this blog because I’ve discovered that, though Black writers are producing much crime fiction, no website is devote to reviewing their books. I wish to change that. I don’t mean to say their books aren’t reviewed. Some are reviewed in the mainstream publications. Walter Mosley, for instance, is sure to be reviewed.

Anyway, please visit the SleuthSayers blog here and discover how writers of crime and mystery fiction come up with ideas for stories, how they construct their stories, and how they publish them. In addition, you’ll read about how real police work, how real soldiers go about soldiering, and many other subjects not necessarily about writing or books.

Have a Merry Christmas, and I’ll catch you in the New Year.