AFRICAN AMERICAN MYSTERY/CRIME AUTHORS OPINIONS ON

A Backstory Thriller

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 05:30:00 +0000

In debut novels, writers sometimes don’t provide extensive background information about the characters’ lives, which in many cases doesn’t matter, but if the protagonist is to be a series character, readers, the writer realizes, will want to know more about his history. This realization provides an excuse for a poorly structured follow-up novel. The Troubleshooter, Austin S. Camacho’s second novel is the backstory of how PI Hannibal Jones met the four homeless men who became his friends and part employees in his PI business, and how he met his love interest, the beautiful Cuban lady lawyer Cynthia (Cindy) Santiago.

Troubleshooter PI Hannibal Jones accepts a job clearing a building in a tough neighborhood in Southeast Washington DC of drug dealers, addicts, whores, and other criminal types. He needs the money and a place to live after the building in which he lived burns down, forcing him temporarily into a hotel.

Hannibal’s main adversary in this predictable crime thriller is Sal Ronzini, son of mob boss Anthony Ronzini. After Hannibal evicts the fence who works for Sal from the building, along with the addicts, dealers, and whores, Sal comes after him. Over and over, Sal comes at Hannibal, and each time Hannibal beats him back but not without help.

In the opening, Hannibal negotiates a settlement with a bookie on behalf of ex-taxi driver Ray Santiago, father of Cynthia Santiago, for repayment of Ray’s gambling debts. He hires Ray to be his driver. He meets four homeless men with various skills at the shelter where he volunteers. Sarge is a Black Vietnam vet. Quaker is his White friend. Virgil is a Black former electrician and ex-addict. Timothy is a hot-headed Jamaican and plumber, who does not become a permanent employee as do the other four men. Hannibal’s crew evens the odds against against Sal’s thugs.

Hannibal discourages the residents of the neighborhood from trying to help because he doesn’t want any of them to get hurt.

The only interesting character in the novel is Anthony Ronzini. He explains why Sal refuses to quit trying to evict Hannibal. In the old days members of each ethnic group knew who they were in relation to other groups but cultural diversity and civil rights (“bunch of crap”) confused things, he tells Hannibal.

As Hannibal interprets it, Ronzini is saying “the boy don’t know any other way.”

“If I was another Italian, he'd know how to deal with me," Hannibal said, standing. "Or at least, he'd know he could deal with me. Sure. Sally probably only sees black guys as servants. Or customers. Maybe competitors. But not as men."

"He knows who he is," Ronzini said. "He doesn't know who you are. I mean, he thinks you're a nigger, but you don't act like a nigger. And he's still acting like a dumb wop.”

The novel is interesting because it provides background information about the serious character, Hannibal Jones. It is otherwise a forgettable.

Hannibal Jones, Troubleshooter

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 14:41:00 +0000

When I read reviews of crime fiction novels online and in newspapers and magazines, I always look for reviews of novels by Black writers, and finding such reviews sends pleasure through my old bones. I discovered Austin S. Camacho while reading the reviews in the online magazine “The Bookreporter.” According to the website fallforthebook Camacho “is active in several writer organizations, … is the 2005-2006 president of the Maryland Writers Association and is a regular speaker at various writer's and book lovers' conventions. He also currently teaches three writing courses at the Anne Arundel Community College.” Camacho works for the Defense Department and for several years has reported the news over radio and television for the American Forces Network.

In his discussion about the Black detective in crime fiction at the Bouchercon’s “Charmed to Death International Conference of Mystery Writers” Camacho stated, “It’s not about race. It’s about the characters. It’s about the mystery.

Like all good storytelling, hard-boiled stories revolve around the characters.”

However, he ends his discussion with the relevant observation that a Black writer of detective fiction can’t escape race because his character is Black: “So maybe, in a way it is about race. Because it’s about the characters more than it’s about the mystery.”

Camacho has written five detective and two action adventure novels. In his first novel, Collateral Damage, he introduces PI Hannibal Jones, son of a Germany mother and African American father. Hannibal considers himself a troubleshooter instead of a PI because, “Other people's troubles became his own. That was how he made his living since he resigned from the Treasury Department.” He is a tough guy who cares about the underdog. His working uniform is dark, wraparound Oakley sunglasses, a black suit and black gloves, black shoes, and in a holster under his right shoulder a Sig Sauer P229. He lives in a poor neighborhood in southwest Washington DC and drives a Volvo 850 GLT.

The opening of this complexly plotted novel begins the subplot. Monty, Hannibal’s 12 year old friend, has asked him to rescue Monty’s friend Nicky and Nicky’s mother from her abusive husband, Isaac. Hannibal shows up and knocks on the door. A big, pro-lineman type dude greets him in an unfriendly manner. He is about 2-3 inches taller and, at 325 pounds, about 100 pounds heavier than Hannibal. How Hannibal handles the situation illustrates Camacho’s skill at creating plot incidents to bring out the characters’ personalities.

Hannibal’s first job is a missing person case. Bea Collins, a middle-aged, successful Black interior designer who lives in an upscale neighborhood, hires him, at $500 a day, plus expenses, to find her missing fiancé, a young white man named Dean Edwards. Hannibal thinks the young man may be a con man but doesn’t say so to Bea. He finds the young man and lets Bea know where he is. Soon afterwards, she calls Hannibal and tells him Dean may be in serious trouble.

When he reaches the Dean’s house, Hannibal finds bloody shoeprints leading to the bedroom where Dean is lying on the bed. He tells Hannibal that Oscar, his supervisor at the computer service firm where he works, is dead and that his mother killed him. Dean believes his mother killed Oscar because the murder weapon is the same knife used to kill his father, for which his mother was convicted. The police later find the knife in Dean’s apartment, making him the prime suspect.

The knife, or one similar to it, also was used in a murder 12 years ago in Germany. Bea persuades Hannibal to investigate Oscar’s murder to prove Dean didn’t do it. Hannibal soon finds himself not only trying to solve Oscar’s murder but the murder of Dean’s father 10 years ago in Virginia and a murder in his hometown of Berlin, Germany.

An Author’s debut novel, if it is good, is an invitation to read his other novels. Camacho’s Collateral Damage certainly invited me to become more familiar with PI Hannibal Jones, a tough, believable, and caring character.

The Case of the Microwave Murder

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 05:01:00 +0000

I considered Erick G. Benson’s debut novel, The Weight-Pile Murder, a failure because of flaws in its structure, problems with the prose, and a lack of tension. He has corrected those flaws in the second Tiger Price murder mystery, but I was steal not impressed.

In Framed Justice ( ISBN 978-0-595-43681-1), Tiger Price investigates the murder of a drug dealer for which his best friend’s son is on trial.

Mario Peck, the son of Price’s friend Paul, got into a fight with his neighbor Fred Dixon over a microwave oven in the hotel where he lived. Fred ended up dead after Mario stabbed him in the neck with a small knife. Somebody hit Mario on the hit, causing him to become woozy, so he didn’t know what happened next. Mario was arrested and accused of killing Fred.

Mario, electing to be his own lawyer, is denied access to his file. The Judge also denies several of the many motions he files. He and his father believe the police, the prosecutor, and the judge are conspiring to frame him. Paul hires attorney Larry Deter, but later tries to fire him because he thinks the attorney isn’t working hard enough on the case. The judge denies his request.

When Price asks Deter to hire him as his investigator, Deter refuses because he doesn’t want Price interfering and telling him how to try the case. This doesn’t stop Price from investigating the case on behalf of his best friend. Upon his initial inspection of the crime scene and review of what little evidence there is Price sees sloppy investigative work.

During his investigation, Price finds himself going up against the system and Deter. He gets help from his friend Ethal, the very efficient clerk at the prison where he previously worked, and from an individual named Pilgrim who hangs out in front of his new office. The evidence he gathers is so compelling Deter cannot refuse to present it in court. The identity of the killer is revealed during Deter’s defense not during Price’s investigation.

Benson shows a flair for vivid description as he presents a picture of the dark side of poverty on a tour of the section of the city near the hotel known as the Black Tunnel:

TP was dumbfounded. The scene was like nothing he'd ever seen in his life. There were aluminum cans and broken bottles strewn across the entire street, sort of like nightmare alley. There were rats as big as cats strolling along freely down the sidewalk, almost carefree, as if marking out a territory. Two homeless-looking men were urinating side-by-side in the middle of the street and, more disgusting still, a woman crouched on the curbside of the street, defecating. TP continued to watch, shocked. The woman finished her business, pulled up her pants, and walked over to a man standing nearby. She placed her hand in a large bag of potato chips that he was holding.

His use of the third person point of view and vivid descriptions show Benson is capable of writing readable prose.

I didn’t like the presentation of the details essential to the plot through courtroom scenes instead of straight narrative. The introduction of a supernatural character who is clearly the deus ex-machina, though well done, is, nevertheless, unnecessary.

The religious element at times intrudes and adds nothing to the plot, character, or theme. For me, the main problem with both novels is the character of Tiger Price. He has no flaws and lacks emotional depth. He is too perfect. I admit he is not as annoying in Framed Justice as he is in The Weight-Pile Murder.

Sometimes, it is difficult to tell whether the thoughts expressed about society, the judicial system, and God are those of Tiger Price or his creator.

Debut Failure

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 05:30:00 +0000

Erick G. Benson, is a playwright, film and television producer, and former parole agent and correctional officer for 12 years in California, which experience obviously gave him some insight into the prison life he so authentically describes in his debut novel The Weight-Pile Murder.

I find it difficult to write a negative review of a novel for two reason. First, I want readers to read the novel and form their own opinions. Second, my reason for writing this blog is to persuade readers to read crime novels by African American authors, which means I must include novels I don’t like. Although the central character in The Weight-Pile Murder is interesting, the novel was disappointing.

Newton Black, leader of the Black Confederate Movement Organization, is killed in the weight-pile, the area of the prison yard where the inmates do weight lifting. Investigative Lieutenant Tiger Price, after working in the California Prison system for 30 years, is three weeks away from retirement. Even if it means delaying his retirement, he feels he must solve the Black murder because, he tells his supervisor, Captain Davenport, “my inner spirit continues to tell me I must complete this mission.”

Price, nicknamed Tiger because his investigative skills are rumored to be “fierce, relentless, energetic, and full of courage as likened to a tiger,” is a 50-year-old widower with two daughters in college. After he retires, he plans to open his own private investigation business. He is very religious, gets down on his knees every night to pray, and he twice asks God for help in solving the case. However, there is no indication that he attends church regularly. For a man who works among all types of criminals, he is an idealist and shows a remarkable lack of cynicism and self-righteousness.

Price’s investigative skills are recognized by his superior and others on the staff, including himself. He has an interrogation method that he proudly describes in too much detail as he formulates questions to ask each inmate on his investigation list. He describes how evaluation of body language is significant. After describing the eyes and hands, he needlessly discusses the tongue.
The tongue is one of the smallest parts of the human body, and more than oftentimes proves to be the most dangerous. The tongue can spew multitudes of filth and can destroy lives in an instance. The tongue can also offer a gentle fragrance of joy. The tongue can cut as well as comfort.

In an interrogation, the tongue may be important because of what is said, but the description rather than showing the importance of the tongue shows how Price can sometimes sound self-righteous.

Benson fails to fulfill a promise he suggests in the opening. Lieutenant Price is sitting in his car in the empty parking lot of a fast food restaurant eating his lunch when he is surrounded by several police officer with drawn guns pointing at him. He manages to identify himself after the supervisor appears. The supervisor explains that the fast food restaurant was robbed 15 minutes ago. Price later checks with the manager of the fast food restaurant and learns the identity of the robber didn’t come close to resembling him. The robber was white and short, he is black and over six feet.

The opening incident promises a motif of racism, causing the reader to expect more confrontations between White and Black inmates or White authorities and Black inmates. No further incidents of possible racism are depicted, thus racism is neither a minor nor a major theme.

In using first person point of view, Benson attempts to match the prose to Price’s personality, making him sound like a bureaucrat and a straight arrow. The result is a lack of separation between dialogue and narrative. Benson has long paragraphs in the middle of which he will insert dialogue, and sometimes the quotation marks at the beginning or end are missing, making it difficult to tell where dialogue ends and narrative begins.

Lieutenant Tiger Price is too good, so good that he is annoying. Even the prisoners like and respect him. He has no faults—was a loving and devoted husband, is now a loving and devoted father, and is exceptionally good at his job. I also was disappointed in the lack of tension, except in the opening scene. At no time is Price or his staff ever in danger from the inmates.

The structure of the novel is awkward, the prose at times clumsy, and the righteous tone irritating.

Benson has written two more Tiger Price novels. Framed Justice I’ll review in my next post. Black White Boy is scheduled for release in the Fall of 2012.

The Firecracker Fails to Explode

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 05:01:00 +0000

In Firecracker, Haywood’s second novel under the pseudonym Ray Shannon, the firecracker of the title is Clarice (Reece) Germaine. Like Ronnie in Maneater, Reece is a strong woman who refuses to become a victim.

Reece is a partner in a public relations firm in Los Angeles. Eight months before her current situation, she spent a week in Las Vegas having fun with Raygene Price, the star tight end for the Dallas Cowboys. Raygene, feeling generous, gave her a $25,000 betting ticket.

Despite taking precautions, she became pregnant and is now eight months into her pregnancy. She agonizes over whether the ticket is really hers or whether it belongs to Raygene, and she should return it. Since Raygene won’t give her the amount of child support she believes she is entitled to, she decides she’ll use the ticket to bet on the Arizona Cardinals to beat the Oakland Raiders in the Super Bowl. If Arizona wins, she will be 1.25 million dollars richer.

Raygene has his own troubles. His money manager stole his money, and he is almost broke. His mother becomes his manager and refuses to give Reece the amount of child support she wants. But his troubles really begin when his boyhood friend, a “wanna be black,” white boy named Trip just released from prison, asks him for money to finance a drug deal. He refuses to believe Raygene doesn’t have any ready money, and threatens to ruin Raygene’s career with information about a boyhood indiscretion. Raygene decides the betting ticket is his way out of the situation. Reece refuses to give him the ticket, even when he tells her about Trip, thus setting up a confrontation between her and Trip.

The protagonist of the subplot is Aeneas Charles, a private detective whom Raygene’s agent, Stanley, hires to watch Raygene and keep him out of trouble at least until the new contract negotiations with the Cowboys are completed. Charles has a problem of which he is unaware. The woman who was his partner on the Newark, New Jersey police force is in Las Vegas. She has not forgotten that she lost her job due to his testimony. When she discovers Aeneas is in Las Vegas, she concocts a revenge plan.

The pregnant super woman is certainly an attention getter. The novel, for me, fails because of the uninteresting characters and an unnecessary subplot. Raygene is the stereotypical dumb jock whom I neither liked nor disliked. Trip the “wanna be black” white boy is interesting on first meeting but becomes rather predictable. EY, his Black bodyguard, has to be the dumbest bodyguard in all of crime fiction. Raygene’s Black bodyguard Brew gets religion after listening to an evangelist on the radio. The private detective subplot slows the pace and contributes nothing to the plot.

My purpose in this blog is to encourage readers of crime fiction to read novels by Black writers. Please don’t let my negative opinion prevent you from reading Firecracker. You may like the novel.

Strong Woman As Victim

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:42:00 +0000

Anthony Gar Haywood, using the pseudonym Ray Shannon, wrote two crime novels on the theme of the strong woman as a victim who fights back.

In the first novel, Maneater, Rhonda (Ronnie) Deal, a junior development executive at Velocity Pictures, is a beautiful woman fighting her way to the top in a business dominated by men. The problems she has in the office with her male rival dwarfs the trouble that finds her when, sitting in a bar drinking a beer and thinking about how to get even with her male rival, she witnesses a big, Black thug snatch a small, young white woman off a bar stool and start beating her. Ronnie gets up and hits the thug over the head with the beer bottle. While he is stunned, she cracks him across the nose with the bottle. When she looks around, she discovers the young woman has fled, and realizes it is time for her to run, too, before he regains his senses.

The man Ronnie knocked temporarily senseless is Neon Polk, a psychopath who hires out as a money collector for drug dealers and other nefarious characters. A pissed off Neon vows that Ronnie is his “blood enemy.” He gets Ronnie’s address, attacks and rapes her in her home, and threatens to repeatedly do it if she doesn’t pay him $50,000 in a week.

Ronnie knows that if she pays Neon, she will become his slave for the rest of her life. If she doesn’t, she is dead. She realizes that she needs help from a man as mean and dangerous as Neon. She finds her knight in shining armor in an ex-con who has submitted a screen play with an urban setting to Velocity Productions. After reading the screen play, she thinks Ellis Langford is the right man to go up against Neon.

Ellis, the protagonist in the subplot, is a parolee recently released from prison and is working as a pizza deliveryman. Aside from the constant aggravation his parole officer causes him by checking up on him, his own trouble begins when he delivers pizza to two Mexican brothers waiting in a motel room to complete a drug deal. The younger brother decides to beat up on Ellis just for fun. A mistake. Ellis tricks them out of the room one at time and puts both in the hospital. They escape the hospital and go looking for him with revenge on their minds.

When she finally meets Ellis, Ronnie sizes him up:

“Ronnie had seen her share of Hollywood poker faces in all their endless variety, but the one Ellis was wearing now was something altogether different. It was as blank and uninformative as a new oil canvas. She had no clue what the man was thinking, or what emotions, if any, she had stirred in him. Compounded by his edgy, catlike beauty, which Ronnie had immediately felt the pull of despite herself, the writer's indecipherability left her with no choice but to maintain a defensive posture toward him.”

Later, after she explains her situation and asks Ellis for his help, he explains to her why she thinks he can help her with Neon: “’The wannabe screenwriter, nigger ex-con you figured oughtta be a cinch to bribe into whacking a stranger for you. Man did it once for nothing, why wouldn't he do it again for a few thousand dollars, right?’”

Will the partnership work? And will they get Neon before the Mexican brothers get Ellis or Neon gets Ronnie?

I enjoyed this relaxing novel because of its fast pace, unrelenting violence, and the tough female protagonist. The villains are true villains with no redeeming characteristics. The two protagonists are flawed but, to use the most favorite word of reviewers, likable characters.

Although I enjoyed the novel, the plot is too pat. It reads as though the novelist was following instructions in a book on how to write a novel.

THE BOND OF FRIENDSHIP

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 12:39:00 +0000

After six Aaron Gunner novels and two novels featuring amateur detective Dottie Loudermilk, Gar Anthony Haywood abandoned detective stories and wrote a crime novel in which the friendship of three friends is severely tested.

In Cemetery Road, the central character and narrator, Errol “Handy” White, reflecting on his situation, remembers that his grandfather “used to say that there were many paths a man could take during his time on earth, but sooner or later, they all brought him down the same one: cemetery road. There was no running from it, there was no hiding from it”

He earned the nickname Handy because of his skill repairing mechanical and electrical devices. He takes things apart and puts them back together for exercise and “for the sake of learning the answer to a single, unrelenting question: Why?” Handy is not above lying for what he believes is a good cause, but sometimes knows his lying is self-serving. At times selfish, he still tries to be a good friend and father.

After an absence of 26 years, Handy returns to Los Angeles from his home in St. Paul Minnesota to attend the funeral his boyhood friend R. J. (Robert James) Burrow, who was allegedly killed in a drug deal gone bad.

Back in his repair shop in St. Paul, Handy is haunted by R. J.’s death. He doesn’t accept the official explanation, and fears that who ever killed R. J. might be coming after him because of a robbery he, R. J., and their friend O’Neal Holden committed 26 years ago. The robbery was his idea and it’s his fault that R. J. is dead. He convinces himself that he wants justice for R. J.

The fear that he is next on the killer’s list forces him to return to Los Angeles to search for the truth of what really happened. During his search, he learns that after R. J. was paroled from prison, he got married and has a daughter who works as a PI in Seattle, and, Handy, thinks she might help him find out who killed R. J. and why.

O’Neal, who is mayor of Bellwood, a small town not far from Los Angeles, does not believe that they are in danger and thinks Handy is being paranoid. Nevertheless, he agrees to use his contacts to help Handy.

Cemetery Road is a thoughtful novel. The rather complex plot relates what is happening in the present to what happened in the past. The back and forth from the present to the past and back again doesn’t slow the pace, which changes from fast-paced action to the slow working of Handy’s thoughts in which he takes apart his past life and views things from a different perspective. Cemetery Road has a few twists and turns, a red herring, and a sure fire surprise ending.

Saturday Snapshot July 30

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:24:00 +0000

Saturday Snapshot meme is on Alyce’s blog "at home with books." To participate post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky below. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.

FIRST SIGN OF SPRING IN MY FRONT YARD 2011

DOTTIE CATCHS UP WITH BAD NEWS

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 13:24:00 +0000

In Going Now Where Fast, Gar Anthony Haywood introduced retired senior citizen sleuth Dottie Loudermilk, who, with her husband, travels around the country in an Airstream trailer home. Along the way, trouble just seems to find them.

We learn a little more about the Loudermilks in the second novel Bad News Travels Fast. Joe retired “from the El Segundo, California, Police Department,” and Dottie retired from the ”faculty of Loyola Marymount University.” Upon retirement, they decided to make their home the open highway: “the question wasn't how often we'd like to leave home, but how fast we could get out of town, and where we could best hide for the remainder of our lives.”

Trouble again finds the Loudermilks while they are in Washington DC visiting their son Eddie. He is arrested and charged with murdering Emmitt Bell, a member of his little protest group whom he and the other members, Stacy, Eileen, and Angus had kicked out. He and Eddie had argued in Eddie’s apartment while Dottie and Joe were present shortly before Emmitt was found dead from a stab wound with a knife Eddie possessed. The warning from the two Washington DC detectives handling the case do not stop Dottie and Joe from looking for evidence to prove their son did not kill Emmitt.

The plot involves the search for a book that might contain dirt on a US Senator. Emmitt had asked Stacy for $500.00 to buy the book that he claimed would make a big splash. Dottie discovers the name of the book on the back of the luggage tag in Emmitt’s bag: “Get It In Writing—The Power of Modern Litigation.” She, Joe, and their daughter Maureen, who comes from California when she discovers the license plate number her parents gave her to check belongs to a car in the congressional motor pool that a Capitol police officer was using to follow Joe and Dottie, begin searching for the book. They feel it is the key to why Emmitt was killed and could lead to the killer.

I enjoyed Bad News Travels Fast. Dottie, even if she is meddlesome and clever at getting husband Joe to do what she wants, makes it fun to read. She is a strong woman who will not let the officials prevent her from proving her son innocent. The novel also has its humorous moments. In the prologue, Dottie acts crazy in front of the Lincoln Monument, telling the other tourists she saw Lincoln’s eyes move. I had to smile at the way the Loudermilks faced danger when I read the incident in which the they find themselves in danger of being killed in crack house.

The big flaw in the plot is Haywood’s failure show who put the book in the place where it is eventually found, and how they got it there. Since the book is the key to the solution of who killed Emmitt and was found in plain sight, how it got there and who put it there are important.

No, I can’t reveal the location of the book for it would spoil your enjoyment in finding it for yourself.

SENIOR CITIZEN DETECTIVE

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 12:31:00 +0000

Gar Anthony Haywood must have grown tired of his Aaron Gunner series, for in his seventh novel, the detective is a wife and mother. The narrator and central character of the humorous Going Nowhere Fast (ISBN: 0-399-13917-6) is 53 year Dottie Loudermilk. She and her 52 year old ex-policeman husband Joe retired, sold their home, bought an Airstream trailer home, and hit the open road.

Although they did not invite him, Bad Dog, nee Theodore, the youngest of their five grown children and the black sheep of the family is with them when they begin their journey. He wants them to give him money to get to Pittsburg where a trainer for the Oakland Raiders, he alleges, will give him a job.

When they reach the Grand Canyon, they think they have lost him at the last stop. Returning to the Airstream after their morning run, two unpleasant surprises that will keep them from “going nowhere fast” greet them.

Bad Dog followed them and is hiding in the closet with a gun.

In the toilet sitting on the seat is a dead man.

The investigating park rangers turn the case over to the police in Flagstaff. The Flagstaff police arrest a man caught driving the dead man’s car, and he immediately becomes the main suspect.

The FBI take over the case and warn Dottie not to interfere. Of course curious Dottie ignores the warning because she wants to know who the man on the toilet is, who killed him, and why the FBI is involved. She feels the police have the wrong man in custody. Her curiosity leads her, Joe, and Bad Dog on a dangerous adventure in which she will confront two hitmen, the football player who is chasing Bad Dog, and a menacing mobster in the Federal Witness Protection program.

In the subplot, Bad Dog doesn’t tell his parents that he had a job with the Raiders looking after their star defensive end. He was supposed to keep him out of trouble, but, thinking he could do it better if he got him away from his friends and teammates, he took him to a place Bad Dog frequented, and they both got drunk. The player was suspended and find $1,000. Bad Dog must pay the fine or suffer a few broken bones.

In stories in which husband and wife work together, the wife wins most of the arguments. Dottie Loudermilk is no exception. She has a way of persuading Joe to do what she wants without him realizing he has lost the argument. She wants to return to Flagstaff to visit the dead man’s widow but Joe wants to heed the FBI’s warning and not meddle in the mess.

"’Dottie, for God's sake-‘ Joe sighed.”

"’If you don't want to go, we won't go. I won't say another word. But San Antonio, Texas-or, worse yet, New Orleans, Louisiana-is hundreds of miles away from Flagstaff, Arizona, Joseph Loudermilk the Second-and that's an awful long way to go without hearing the sound of another human voice. Isn't it?’"

“I smiled and dug into my salad again.

“A half hour later, Joe made a right turn out of the restaurant parking lot instead of a left, and another page was written in the Dottie Loudermilk Handbook of Shameless Bluffing.”

She also has a way with words. Her description of the football player: “I was standing directly in front of him, my neck turned up at a ninety-degree angle so that I might see his face. It was like trying to spot the heliport atop the World Trade Center from down on the street”

The Loudermilks are two Senior citizens who do not go gently into the good night upon retirement, and that is why I like Going Nowhere Fast. Bad Dog and the football player provide misdirection, humor and Deus ex Machina. The Deus ex Machina is not a surprise or distracting because it is well prepared for. The ending is one hell of a surprise.

A MIXTURE OF LOCKED ROOM AND HARDBOIL

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 14 May 2011 12:15:00 +0000

Gar Anthony Haywood mixes elements of hard-boiled genre with elements of locked room mystery in the last novel in his Aaron Gunner series. All the Lucky Ones Are Dead (ISBN 0-399-14540-0) opens with Los Angeles PI Aaron Gunner taking on the first of two cases. The manager of a radio station asks Gunner to protect his prize talk show host, who has been receiving threats and is maybe being followed. Gunner immediately dislikes Sparkle Jones, a Black female conservative, because of her smart mouth and arrogant, know-it-all manner. To complicate matters further, Jones doesn’t want a bodyguard.

He refuses to take the case until her car is blown up. Then, he rationalizes his decision: “On occasion, pressed into a corner by financial straits, Gunner found it necessary to work for a wrongheaded blowhard like Sparkle Johnson in spite of his wishes to do otherwise. It wasn't easy, but he could manage.”

He hires Jolly Mokes, a veteran with whom he served in Vietnam, to watch Sparkle. Jolly is fresh out of prison on parole, where he served time for killing his wife in It’s Not A Pretty Sight. Before the case is over, Gunner confronts a former enemy, the Defenders of the Bloodline. I think Haywood included this plot to get rid of the Defenders of the Bloodline, the self-appointed guardians of the Black race, because he disapproves of their actions and their philosophy. The plot has the hardboiled elements of constant violent action and a real blast of an ending.

The second case of a dead rap artist is a mixture of locked room mystery and the gunplay of the hardboiled. Rapper CE Digga Jones (real name Carlton William)is found dead in his apartment. The police rule it a suicide because the door was locked from the inside, and no one was with him. Benny Elbridge, Digga’s absentee father, doesn’t believe he committed suicide, though he hasn’t seen his son in many years and wasn’t around during his growing up years. He asks Gunner to prove it wasn’t suicide. Since he has money to pay him, Gunner takes the case.

Gunner is no fan of gangsta rap and isn’t happy about having to rub elbows with “thugs who knew how to sample and rhyme, so-called security men eight days out of San Quentin, and power-mongering record execs who spent more time cutting lines of coke than they did distribution deals”

Lily, the owner of the bar that Gunner frequents, expresses, maybe, Haywood’s true attitude toward rap music “’…It’s just a lotta noise and bad language. ‘Muthafucka’ this, and ‘muthafucka’ that, boom-boom-boom’”

Digga’s wife and his manager accept the suicide verdict, but not his mother Coretta, a woman who “in the flesh exuded all the charm and sensitivity of a rusty hacksaw blade.” She doesn’t want an investigation but refuses to explain why. Bume Webb, the owner of the company for which Digga recorded, also doesn’t accept the suicide. He is a suspect because Digga threatened to leave his company. The main suspect is another rapper, 2Daddy Large,“…a dreadlocked, broad-shouldered, dragon-nostriled young brother…”), who has a thing for Digga’s wife Danee.

Being a PI in Los Angeles is a dangerous business. When Gunner gets out of his car and approaches the door of Danee’s house to question her about Digga, he finds himself dodging bullets from a .45 Danee, in a window, is holding in her hand.

Of course, there is a note which neither the police nor Benny has seen. Much of the plot involves Gunner searching for what he believes may be a suicide note.

Haywood skillfully uses the mixture of locked room and hardboiled elements without slowing the pace of the novel. Both plots, however, deserve a novel in their own right. Also, two characters surnamed “Jones” having no relation to each other could confuse some readers. Another plotting flaw is common to all the Gunner novels. The endings in are uncomfortably similar—a shootout between Gunner and the bad guys.

I like PI Aaron Gunner because he is entertaining. Sadly, he is in none of Haywood’s remaining novels.

ME AND MY E-READER

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:06:00 +0000

My kids gave me an e-reader, a Nook, for my 75^th birthday. So, instead of a book review essay this month, I felt compelled to write something about e-books and those gadgets that are used to read and store them.

For quite a while I had wanted to experience what it was like reading a book on an e-reader, but I was not going to buy a reader, no sir, because I disliked the things from the time the first one hit the market. Taking the advice of that cliché “don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” and since it was a gift, I decided to try the Nook.

That the e-reader can hold thousands of books does not impress me. I can read only one book at time, and I can’t touch or see the books on the reader as I can those on my bookshelves. I also don’t like the fact that I might not even own the books I paid $9.00 for. As I understand it, at least from Amazon.com, the seller of the books can delete them from the reader at any time.

The Nook had 100 books already stored on it that are in the public domain and that can be downloaded for free from the Gutenberg web site. I had read and had most of them on my bookshelves. I deleted most of them and chose to read Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I had not read.

My Nook is black and about 4.75 inches wide and 7.5 inches long. The screen is 3.5 inches wide and 5.00 inches long. It is in other words about the size of a paperback book. The home, menu, shop, and back buttons are on the left edge, and in the lower right corner is a big button with small raised dots that are used to turn the pages and resize the text. The on-off switch is on the top right edge.

It requires two hands, one to hold it and the other to push the various buttons. Having to push the tiny buttons to turn pages is rather awkward for me. I miss the rattle of turning paper pages, the imaged smell of ink, and trying to keep from breaking the spine of new books. Although I don’t like writing in the margins of books, I do it anyway when a thought about a word, paragraph, or idea hits my mind as I’m reading. I can’t do that with e-readers.

I confess that I read faster with the large text and the small screen of my Nook. Still, it isn’t enough to endear me to e-readers.

I’m not one to deplore change. I welcome it. I don’t dislike technological changes and the new gadgets they produce. I welcome the gadgets and I enjoy trying them out.

When I was younger, I rode the bus from Richmond, California across the Bay Bridge to my job in San Francisco. During that ride, I read a good many books in paperback. I imagine that if I had had an e-reader in those days, I would have gladly welcomed it.

DOUBLE TROUBLE

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:43:00 +0000

When Last Seen Alive (Penguin, ISBN 0-525-17027-6), the fifth novel in Gar Anthony Haywood’s Aaron Gunner series, opens with the private investigator working for Connie Everson, wife of Inglewood councilman Gil Everson, taking pictures of her husband with other women. However, she complicates matters when she insists on pictures of her husband with one specific woman, but doesn’t tell Gunner the name of the woman or give him a description. Gunner is not happy with the peeping-tom case but it pays the bills. Since he is not a photographer and is also working a second case, he hires 17-year-old Sly Cribbs, a budding photographer, to follow councilman Everson. The teen is shot, and Gunner, blaming himself for putting Sly in harms way, needs to find the shooter and his or her connection to the Everson case.

One of the reasons Gunner takes on a second case is a beautiful, single woman, with whom, over the course of the investigation, he becomes romantically involved. Yolanda McCeary hires him to find her brother who goes under the name of Elroy Covington. Covington had been seen with someone he knew during the Million Man March in Washington DC and was last seen in Los Angeles just before he disappeared with Barber Jack, a straight razor wielding, fat, mean sociopath whom Gunner’s friends warn him against. He is cautioned to beware of the straight razor.

Gunner gets an even bigger surprise when he realizes he is also in conflict with the dangerous Defenders of the Bloodline, the self-appointed guardians of Black dignity whose mission is to teach a lesson to Black people whom they decide are a disgrace to the race. They consider themselves to be “the assassins for the people.”

A flier the group circulates serves notice “To the serpents among us. The liars and sinners in blackface who work in legion with the white Devil to shame our proud people. The defenders of the bloodline will purge you from the house of Africa until none of you remain. Some have already met the sword of righteousness. Many more will follow. Your house is close at hand. Allah, the most merciful, is on our side.”

The group is interested in Covington because as a reporter on a Chicago newspaper, he wrote a story about Black people that was untrue and unflattering. He is, to them, a disgrace to the race. The Defenders warn Gunner to back off when he gets too close to the truth. Like any good PI, he wants to finish the job, so ignores the warning.

I like this novel for its graphic action scenes. If you like vivid descriptions of fights and near escapes, then you will enjoy When Last Scene. Both plot lines have genuine surprise endings for Gunner and the reader. I was disappointed, however, with the Connie Everson plot because it seemed incomplete, and left me wondering if maybe Haywood forgot about his characterization of her.

DEAD WOMEN ARE NOT PRETTY

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:55:00 +0000

In his three previous Aaron Gunner novels, Gar Anthony Haywood dealt with the themes of Black revolutionaries, gangbangers, and the conflict between the Los Angeles police department and the Black community. The theme of the fourth novel in the series is abused women.

It’s Not A Pretty Sight, (ISBN 0-399-14132-4), opens with Gunner reluctantly taking on a job for Roman Goody, owner of Best Way Store to find Russell Dartmouth, who owes Goody for merchandise he bought on credit. Gunner finds Dartmouth, a mean, dangerous man, and tells Goody. This angers Dartmouth because Goody hounds him for payment. Gunner is unaware at the time that he has become the target for the big man’s anger. However, the case is secondary to the primary case Gunner investigates but is thematically connected to the motif of how psychopaths differ.

The primary case involving the brutal murder of his ex-fiancée Nina is personal for Gunner. He didn’t want to get married so he broke up with her but remained friends with her and her mother, though he hadn’t spoken to either in many years. He wants to find the real killer because of his past love and friendship with Nina.

His investigation takes him to Sisterhood House, a refuge for abused women, and he learns some surprising things about Nina that he would rather not have known. What he learns causes him to include four women in the house as suspects. Everyone in Sisterhood believes Michael, her abusive husband, killed Nina.

The visit to Sisterhood House gives Gunner the opportunity to state his opinion on abusive Black men, and I suspect he speaks for the author.

Mrs. Singer, the director of Sisterhood House, asks Gunner his opinion of abusive Black men. Gunner opines that they "have a self-esteem problem, number one. And number two, they can't handle pressure they feel black women put on them to be perfect. Perfect lovers, fathers, providers--the works."

He blames Black women because “the standard some black women hold a man up to is unreasonably high. And…failing to meet that standard can sometimes do as much to cut a man down at the knees as anything another man could ever do to him. Possibly even more."

From the police, Gunner learns that the gun that killed Nina also killed another man. The owner of the gun is another psychopath, a hitman named Angelo Dobbs.

Working two cases simultaneously requires, of course, two dramatic conclusions: in the first, Gunner faces off with the big man, Dartmouth. He has some sympathy for the psychopath because “Killers like Russell Dartmouth took no pride in what they did; they saw their acts of violence not as works of art, but as unfortunate measures the world had forced them to take.”

But Angelo Dobbs is a different creature altogether. Gunner and a police detective go after the crazed killer. He has no sympathy for Dobbs: “The men and women cut from his mold were ashamed of nothing; they treated their every accomplishment like a badge of honor, something to show the world with pride and self-satisfaction. No crime was too vile or too senseless to confess to; no theft, no rape, no disfigurement of the innocent. And certainly no murder. Murder was the greatest trophy of all.”

Haywood suggests that abusive men are psychopaths, and that not all psychopaths are the same, and some may need our sympathy. His handling of the psychopathic theme is good. However, as a Black man, I felt uneasy about his opinion of why Black men abuse Black women. It allows Black men the luxury of refusing to accept their violent behavior. The devil didn’t make him do it, the Black woman did.

The novel shows that somethings in the Black community are no different from those in the White community—dangerous psychopaths come in all colors.

It’s Not A Pretty Sight is an entertaining and informative novel.

DOING WRONG FOR RIGHT REASON

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 14:37:00 +0000

In his first novel, Fear of the Dark, Gar Anthony Haywood’s PI, Aaron Gunner, battled Black would-be revolutionaries. In the second novel, Not Long For This World, Gunner’s attitude toward gangbangers changed from hostility to sympathy.

The theme in You Can Die Trying, the third novel in the series, is the uneasy relationship between the Los Angeles Police Department and the Black community.

Sixteen year old Lendell Washington and his cousin Noah Ford attempt to rob a liquor store and flee when things go wrong. Officer Jack McGovern chases Washington into a dark alley. McGovern fire two shots into the darkness, killing Washington. Since no gun or bullets are found, the Department concludes that McGovern killed Washington in cold blood.

Because of his policing methods, the Black community hates and fears McGovern. Some members on the Department, including the Chief, believe getting rid of McGovern will improve the reputation of the Department in the Black Community. The Chief also hopes it will help his chance of becoming mayor.

Mitchell Flowers, a concerned citizens who believes in justice, hires Aaron Gunner to prove that McGovern shot in self defense. Flowers claims he saw the shooting and that Washington fired first. He didn’t come forward when the incident happened eight months ago because he had been warned not to.

Gunner thinks the warning made Flowers feel like an “Uncle Tom”:

Being made to feel answerable to the whole of one's own race was a burden few white men ever had to shoulder, yet it was a black man's birthright from day one.

Still, he is reluctant to take the case because it means going up against the LA police department, and he must convince the Department that he is not working for Washington’s mother, who is suing the Department.

For Gunner, Mrs. Washington and her lawyer Milton Wiley are more trouble than the police. With Wiley’s encouragement, Mrs. Washington believes Gunner is working to help the LA police Department white wash the case. Wiley, sensing that Gunner mistrusts him, tries to explain his actions in terms of his two laws theory:

There has never been only one law in this country, Mr. Gunner. You know that. From the moment your ancestors and mine were first brought here, there has always been two separate codes of behavior in effect: the white man’s and the black man’s. that I have spent seven years of my life practicing the former does not mean I am ignorant of the latter.

The murder of Lendell’s cousin Noah further complicates Gunner’s investigation because it suggests an unknown player, someone who didn’t want Noah to talk.

Gunner’s search for the gun, the most important evidence, leads him into a poor section of Los Angeles to a homeless man called Dancing Fred who may have information about the gun. This allows Hayward to editorialize through Gunner’s thoughts on homelessness:

In alleys and old warehouses, along railroad ties and freeway off-ramps, Dancing Fred's comrades clustered against the cold, trying to eke dignity out of a beggar's existence. White men in lifeless sport jackets and soleless brown shoes; black women swathed shawls and blankets three layers deep; children wearing clothing others had given up for rags—all of them made for a slow parade to nowhere that was difficult to take in.

The theme of the police versus the Black community is made explicit through Gunner’s discussion with his policeman friend Kupchak. He doesn’t accept Kupchak’s explanation that the police see the relationship as a war because they feel the Black community hates them. Gunner explains that it is fear not hate. Kupchak admits that some decent people live in the Black community but points out that those whom the police have to deal with are lowlifes and that an officer cannot mistake one for the other, or he is dead.

In the end, Gunner realizes that Kupchak’s view is similar to that of Dancing Fred. Dancing Fred describes the world as cold and life as dangerous and that “You can die tryin’” to survive. For the police it is about survival; for those in the Black community facing the police, it is also about survival.

Haywood presentation of his societal ideas through dialogue not narrative comment by the author helps give his novels some plausibility. However, his telling rather than showing that McGovern is a bad cop lessen the plausibility but helps maintain the pace of the novel .

You Can Die Tryin’ is not best of the three novels, but it is still enjoyable.

The Gangbanger Life

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 13:50:00 +0000

In Not Long For This World, (ISBN 01401.52652) Gar Anthony Haywood’s second Aaron Gunner novel, the private detective reluctantly takes a job to prove a 22-year-old gangbanger did not kill the community leader who was trying to change the lives of some gangbangers.

Darrel Lovejoy, in partnership with flamboyant minister Reverend Willie Raines, is founder and CEO of Los Angeles Peace Patrol, an organization designed to try to persuade bangers to leave the gangbanging life. Lovejoy wants to change the life of the bangers. Raines wants to bring the gangs together for a peace conference and gain publicity for his church. The authorities believe Lovejoy was killed because he interfered with the gangs’ ability to recruit new members. The gangbangers believe it was one gang’s attempt to frame another gang.

Beautiful public defender Kelly DeCharme hires Gunner to prove that gangbanger Toby Mills was not in the car and was not the shooter in the drive-by shooting of Lovejoy. To prove Mills was not the shooter, he must find the driver, Rookie Davidson, the young gangbanger who often drives for the gang known as the “Imperial Blues.” The search takes him into the violent, dangerous world of gangbangers in South Central Los Angeles. Gunner hates gangbangers and is not happy about going up against them.

Imperial Blues gang member Smalltime believes Mills is innocent and helps Gunner navigate the world of gangbangers. He warns Gunner to be careful and not cross paths with Cube Clark, a 15 year-old gangbanger even other bangers fear.

Haywood uses the hardboiled structure to explore the troubling subject of the social conditions that cause young boys to join the violent gangs that eventually become their families. Gunner describes the environmental conditions that send boys into the gangbanger’s life to the Assistant District Attorney trying the Mills case and the detective working the case:

Take one kid, male. Put him in a fatherless family of eight that lives in a two-bedroom bungalow full of roaches and bad plumbing. Give his mother a problem with the bottle and a tenth-grade education, and send him to a school where the books are eleven years old and the teachers are too preoccupied with the prospect of getting shot to teach anybody anything. Give him a college-educated older brother who can't afford to buy a two-bedroom home in Lynwood and then move a gold-laden, Four-fifty SL-driving crack dealer into the house next door. What've you got, inevitably? Somebody that learns fast not to give a shit about tomorrow, that's what. A turned-off, tuned-out, full-fledged illiterate dying to take his dead-end future out on the whole goddamn world.

After his experience with the gangbangers, Gunner is unable to

…revive the blissfully blind hatred he had held for gangbanging and all its participants only five short weeks ago. Deliberately, he thought about drive-bys and baby-faced wannabes, killers without conscience making hand signals for TV cameras, and walls and fences obliterated by overlapping layers of prideful, grotesque graffiti. He thought about crack and PCP, shotguns and Uzis and AK-47s, scars across beautiful throats and heavy black bellies-in short, every bleak, soul-crushing, and heartbreaking aspect of the L.A. street-gang culture could possibly imagine.

And still the pure, uncomplicated abhorrence he had once known for gangbanging would not come.

The change in his attitude toward bangers reveals that Gunner is a tough private detective with compassion for some in the violent world of criminals, especially for those who are practically babies when they enter the world of gangbangers.

There are no surprises in the novel because Haywood so carefully prepares the reader for the revelations. He again goes against convention in his treatment of the detective’s relationship with women. In Not Long For This World, Gunner falls in love with Darrel’s widow, Claudia Lovejoy.

A Hot Day In L. A.

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:45:00 +0000

Mix politics with racism and black revolutionaries, and you get an exciting debut novel about an ex-private detective trying to solve the murder of two men killed in a bar on a hot day in Los Angeles.

Two years before Walter Mosley’s novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, was published, Gar Anthony Haywood published his first novel, Fear of the Dark, for which he received the St. Martins' Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best First Private Eye Novel Award. He has written seven novels featuring Aaron Gunner, two novels featuring the husband and wife amateur detectives Joe and Dottie Loudermilk (Retired Couple), and two novels under the pseudonym Ray Shannon.

Fear of the Dark introduces private detective Aaron Gunner. In the violent opening scene, a White man, Denny Townsend, walks into a Black bar in South Central Los Angeles and fatally shoots Buddy Dorris, member of the Black revolutionary organization, The Brothers of Volition, and J. T., the owner of the bar. Dorris’s sister, Verna Gail, asks Aaron Gunner, former private detective, who now works as an electrician for his cousin, to find the White man with the crazy eye who killed her brother. Gunner doesn’t want to get back into the detective business. He quit the business after he was unable to safe the young daughter of Al Dobey, a pimp who had hired him to find her after she was kidnapped. He prefers continued wallowing in his self-imposed misery. But, the money she offers and her body convince him to take the case.

Gunner and J. T.’s wife believe J. T., not Dorris, was the target because she heard J. T. talking angrily on the phone to Jimmy Price, Sweet Lou Jenkins’s lawyer. Sweet Lou, a major drug dealer, wants an empty building J. T. owns.

Gunner realizes that whatever he has gotten himself into is deeper and more complicated than he at first thought when he wakes up in his car after being knocked out while watching a gym where Townsend worked out, and sees a dead Townsend in the passenger seat. Los Angeles Homicide detective Lt. Matthew Poole threatens to charge Gunner with murder unless he finds the killer. He gives Gunner 72 hours to be a detective again because he believes Gunner’s story that he was setup.

“You’re supposed to be a cop,” Poole reminds Gunner and advises him to act like one to save his “ass.”

The setup convinces Gunner that the shooting was random and maybe Dorris not J. T. was the target. Finding the killer pits him against members of the Brothers of Volition, Sweet Lou, and a white political operative who wants to start a race riot to help his boss win an election.

Fear of the Dark has two climatic scenes, though the final scene might be considered a wrap up instead of anticlimactic. Ordinarily, I would condemn two such scenes, but in this novel, they are appropriate.

Haywood shows his storytelling skills in a complex plot that maintains the rapid pace and respect for two of the hardboiled genre conventions: beautiful young women and plenty of violence and gunplay. Although he departs somewhat when he has Gunner sleep with his beautiful client.

His use of the third person omniscient point of view, with Gunner’s narrative voice predominant, gives the reader second hand knowledge of what the Gunner thinks and feels. Gunner’s is the predominant voice in Haywood’s use of the third person point of view. The only drawback to his use of the third person point of view, though I tend to favor it, is the reader sometimes can’t tell if the sociologic generalizations are the author’s or the detective’s.

A LOSS OF CREATIVE POWERS

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 13:25:00 +0000

"By definition, if a thriller does not thrill, it is not doing its job" David Hewson, Welcome of Thrillers: 100 Must Reads.

Stephen L. Carter’s fourth novel, Jericho’s Fall (Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95 (hardcover), 355 pages, ISBN978-0-307-27262-I), a thriller about the danger of using secrets as bargaining chips, lacks the heart pounding, fast pace, danger- around-every-corner of the thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Jericho Ainsley, a dying former Secretary of Defense and Director of Central Intelligence, is threatening to reveal either government secrets or secrets involving a scandal in the investment firm for which he worked after retiring from government service. He warns former colleagues and enemies in the United States and Europe that if “Jericho falls” or if any member of his family is harmed, including his former lover, he’ll reveal their secrets. As a result some people (mysterious “they”) want to know what he knows and some want him dead.

Rebecca DeForde, the central character through whom the reader witnesses the unbelievable action, is his former lover. She has not seen or heard from Jericho for 13 years. Now 34, she first met him when she was a 19-year-old sophomore in Princeton, and he was one of her professors. He seduced her, and they had an 18 month relationship before she broke it off because of his cheating on her and his wife. When Jericho calls, she leaves her six year daughter with her mother in Florida and rushes to mansion-fortress in Colorado. Jericho tells her about the secret information and explains that he wants her to find where he has hidden it. He knows where it is but, because he likes to play games and manipulate people, tells her she must figure it out for herself, and she must not tell his two daughters why he summoned her. He does not tell her what she is to do with the information.

Jericho’s Fall is the worse of Carter’s four novels. Rebecca, with no experience in dodging bad guys and in using reason to solve puzzles, such as Jericho wants her to do, is an unbelievable character in an unbelievable plot.

The “Director of Everything,” as the author refers to Jericho, is a very sick man whose cancer has attacked his brain. Yet, he often has lucid moments, enough so that he can still scheme and manipulate people. Moreover, no one knows Jericho has the secrets until he reveals it. Carter apparently expects the reader to believe that Jericho was in one of his diseased-mind moments when he informed old enemies and friends that he had secrets which could destroy them. Yet, in one of his lucid moments, he certainly knew Rebecca and his two daughters were in danger and kept warning Rebecca but not his daughters.

With one exception, the characters in Jericho’s Fall are all white. This is not a criticism, for I believe that black writers can create white characters, and white writers are very capable of creating black characters. I merely note that Carter deviates from his integration of black and white characters in his three previous novels.

As I was reading the novel, I did not care if Rebecca found the secret information or what would happen to her when she did. Jericho’s Fall does not do what a good novel should, entertain the reader.

THE GRAND CONSPIRACY

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:46:00 +0000

I am skeptical of nonfiction writers who attempt to write novels. However, nonfiction writer Stephen L. Carter’s bestselling first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park, convinced me that he has novel writing skills. He followed this success with the enjoyable second novel of conspiracy, New England White.

Sometimes a novelist’s quick success is followed by failure. This is not the case with Carter. Palace Council (2008, Vintage, $15.00, ISBN 978-0-307-38596-30), his third novel, is a political thriller about twenty Black and White men who in1952 met and devised a plan called “The Project” to take over the government of the United States. They called themselves the “Palace Council.”

The predominate voice in this complexly constructed novel is that of Edward Trotter Wesley, Jr. (Eddie), a successful Black novelist and essayist. The secondary, but no less important voice, is that of his ex-girlfriend Aurelia Treene Garner. She complements Eddie’s tendency toward physical action with her analysis and decoding of Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” the source of the Palace Council’s symbolism. Together, they try to stop the Palace Council.

We are taken immediately into the action when 30 months after the 1952 meeting, Eddie, leaving the party where Aurelia announces her engagement to Kevin Garner, stumbles over the body of Philmont Castle. In the dead man’s hand is an upside down Cross of Saint Peter. As a writer, Eddie is curious about the cross and why it is upside down, but his instinct tells him to run because it isn’t safe for a Black man to be found next to a dead White man in Harlem. His search for the significance of the cross is one thread of the action that drives the plot.

The main action is Eddie’s 20 year search for his younger sister Junie. She and a friend vanished on their way to the University of Chicago where Junie had planned to study law. Eddie’s encounter with the Palace Council begins when he learns that Junie may have joined the group in the 1960s, and that Perry Mount, a childhood friend, may have been the one who got her involved in the group’s plans.

Before he learns of Junie’s disappearance, however, Eddie draws the attention of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover because of his involvement with two men whom Hoover suspects are Communists. The Black scientist Dr. Joseph Belt is found dead after Eddie tried unsuccessfully to interview him. A man calling himself Emil thinks Eddie knew Castle and asks him to retrieve some photos he took of Castle’s son for the Boy Scouts. When he interviews Eddie, Hoover reveals his real purpose: to persuade him to spy on some of the Black radicals.

Once Eddie starts looking for Junie, the FBI and Palace Council members follow him. The FBI believes she is Commander M, the leader of a radical group they call Jewel Agony that they suspect was involved in a car bombing that killed a White man following the death of the four little Black girls in the church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. The Palace Council fears she knows too much and might reveal their plans to the authorities.

Aurelia’s marriage eventfully gives her access to information about the Palace Council she and Eddie later use to reveal its current leader. However, she doesn’t get deeply involved in helping Eddie until after Kevin is killed in a car bomb explosion, and she discovers he was heir to his father’s membership on the Palace Council. She realizes her son is now heir to the Garner’s membership. Thus, fear for her son leads her to join Eddie in the search for the “Testament” Philmont Castle left about the 1952 meeting.

Unknown to Eddie and Aurelia, a third party has taken over the Palace Council and is killing some of the older members. The third party is also searching for the “Testament.” Another danger the two face is the assassin someone has hired to follow them.

I enjoyed the Palace Council as much as I did Carter’s first two novels, but I had a feeling he was losing his inventive powers.

I AM SADDEN BY THE DEATH OF

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:01:00 +0000

ELeanor Taylor Bland (1944-2010), who died on June 2, 2010 in Waukegan, Illinois. She was one of the African American writers who helped bring African American mystery/crime fiction into the mainstream in her police procedural novels featuring Marti MacAlister, a wife, mother, and homicide detective. Bland left a modest body of work in 13 novels written between 1992 and 2005. She also edited Shades of Black, a collection of mystery and crime short stories by African American writers.

A Dark and Deadly Deception, her last novel, the thirteenth in her Marti MacAlister series, published in December 2005, is about her favorite subjects, family and children.

The case begins for Lincoln Prairie homicide detective Marti MacAlister and her partner Matthew (Vik) Jessenovik when two boys swimming in the flooding Des Plains river discover the body of a woman snagged on a tree branch. The body is later identified as Savannah Payne-Jones, a minor actress with the film company making a movie near Lincoln Prairie. The case takes the reader into the history of two families, one Black and one White, in Lincoln Prairie. Savannah is connected to the Black family through Lincoln Prairie resident Delilah Greathouse, who doesn't know that the dead actress is her granddaughter, but suspects it when she sees that the picture in the newspaper looks like her long lost daughter Tamara.

Thomas Newsome is the last surviving member of the White family for whom Delilah once worked. Through him, Bland is able to again explore another of her favorite subjects―orphans, this time in Romania. The Archbishop of Romania is coming to a town near Lincoln Prairie to raise funds for the orphans in his country. Thomas wants to return some jewelry that his grandfather brought with him to America which belongs to Romania. His older brother Warren was killed in WWII, and his younger brother Edmund disappeared.

The primary clue in the case is an earring made with a zirconia setting. Marti learns from Sara, Savannah’s daughter, that she also wore a brooch and wore her jewelry in all her movies and when she gambled. Marti’s research shows that the jewelry, though of little value, was made by a famous jewel maker from Eastern Europe, possibly Romania. How did it get into the country and in to the hands of Savannah and why would anyone kill for something of little value, unless they didn’t know its value are the questions Marti must find the answer to if she is to solve the murder. The identity of the murderer is creditable surprise for Marti, Delilah, and the reader.

Because the case is under the jurisdiction of the Northern Illinois Regional Task Force of which Marti and Vik are members, it is assigned to them. The assignment provides the new supervisor, Lieutenant Gail Nicholson, another opportunity to attempt to force Marti to quit by making her life on the job miserable. She pushes Marti and Vik (but mostly Marti) to work on the case of an unidentified skeleton found ten years ago in the sealed second floor of a building in Lincoln Prairie. The autopsy showed it was a male who died from a gunshot wound. Clues to identify the skeleton are otherwise nonexistent. Lieutenant Nicholson's efforts are thwarted by the task force case, which takes precedent because its supervisor outranks her.

I believe that had Bland lived, she would have continued the antagonism between Marti and Nicholson, which has given the series some snap in the last two novels that it is lacking in the other novels.

In A Cold and Silent Dying, the bad guy dictated the action. The investigation drives the plot in A Dark and Deadly Deception. I like bad guys, so, for me, A Cold and Silent Dying was more enjoyable. Some readers may not like that in the present, Delilah and Thomas have no connection to each other. However, once you know the history of the two families about half way through the novel, you can easily guess the what connects them. Bland also leaves it to the reader to guess the identity of the skeleton.

The Devil Returns

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:38:00 +0000

DeVonte Lutrell, the “Mr. Right” Marti MacAlister’s friend Sharon married in Whispers in the Dark, and who almost killed her and her daughter Lisa, returns to again terrorize Sharon in the twelfth Marti MacAlister novel A Cold and Silent Dying.

Lutrell has gone from killing wealthy women after swindling them to killing homeless women while he tries to get money he feels Sharon owes him before he exacts revenge on her, her daughter, and Marti.

In the opening, he calls Sharon and tricks her into believing he has Iris, Marti’s sister-in-law from her marriage to Johnnie MacAlister, and Iris’s eight year old daughter Lynn Ella and will kill them if she doesn’t do what he tells her. He found Iris, who left home at an early age and was never seen again, living in an institution for recovering addicts. Her older daughter has been adopted. Lutrell bought Lynn Ella from her foster mother, and she lives in his apartment in Chicago.

The woman on the phone to Sharon is homeless. He kills her and leaves the body along with another one he has killed in an empty house next to Deer Woods in Lincoln Prairie. Detective Marti MacAlister and her partner Vik Jessenovik enter the case when the two bodies are found. Fred Reskov, a Desert Storm vet who sleeps in the Deer Woods, becomes the prime suspect when they learn he was in the house and has blood on his clothes. He is unable to explain the blood because of his alcohol-dulled memory. As he gradually regains his memory of that night, he remembers seeing two dead bodies in the house and a Black man leaving.

Fred doesn’t tell Marti and Vik right a way what he saw because he realizes that something is wrong with the water in Deer Woods and decides to confront Karl Wittenberg, the owner of Deer Woods. The second villain is thus introduced in the subplot. Wittenberg’s family has owned Deer Woods for many years. When he was a boy, his father dumped old car batteries and engine oil in the woods. Realizing Fred might know about the hazardous waste in Deer Woods, he bails him out of jail. The Deer Woods situation leads to the first dramatic moment in the novel when Fred confronts Wittenberg, who has a loaded gun in his hand. You know I’m not going to reveal what happened between them.

The main conflict between DeVonte, Sharon, Lupe, Vik, and Marti ends in thriller fashion in a cemetery in Chicago.

An exciting addition to the Lincoln Prairie police force is Lieutenant Gail Nicholson, who “could have passed for white were it not for her chestnut brown skin.” She takes over as supervisor when the former supervisor, Lieutenant Dirkowitz, is promoted to deputy chief after the chief is killed in a boating accident. What makes her addition exciting is the immediate antagonistic relationship between her and Marti.

From Marti’s perspective, “Nicholson would be just another black female cop who outranked her unless she discredited or got rid of Marti, or gained her own rep, or both.”

Nicholson feels that Marti, “After all the years on the force, ten years working the streets of Chicago...still believed in that stupid motto, To Serve and Protect.” For Nicholson, Police work is “a job, not a vocation.

“And it was a job that would be done her way by everyone on her watch. She was in charge here, not Marti MacAlister.” She never says a harsh word about or to Vik.

Bland attempts to make us sympathize with Lutrell by having him grow fond of Lynn Ella, whom he thinks may be some kind of conjurer. In his backstory, we are to believe his mother made him do it. But the only feeling I had for him is fear--he is the type of villain who keeps you reading, though you dislike him and fear for those he menaces. And you know he will lose, the only question is how.

A Cold and Silent Dying is the best plotted novel in the Marti MacAlister series thus far. In the previous novels, the subplots sometimes had only a tenuous connection to the main plots. Using Fred as a linchpin, Bland skillfully weaves together the main plot and subplot in A Cold and Silent Dying.

THE EVILS OF THE PAST

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Mon, 17 May 2010 12:54:00 +0000

Fatal Remains, the eleventh novel in Eleanor Taylor Bland’s Marti MacAlister series, is about the exploitation of runaway slaves and the removal of Native Americans from their ancestral land.

Homicide detective Marti MacAlister and her partner Matthew Jessenovik are called to a site where a vagrant has found the skeleton of a Native American on land near the estate of the prominent Smith family. They notice that Several holes have been dug on the estate and more are being dug.

The Smiths have hired Larissa Linski, a student archeologist, to search the holes and report what she finds. She finds four metal tags, gives three to an unnamed person, and keeps one. She is later found dead, apparently from an accidental cave-in. Expert evidence suggests her death was no accident.

Harry Buckner, the handyman who operated the backhoe to dig the holes, finds a Native American belt. He later falls to his death from the second floor of the barn. The detectives conclude that his death also was no accident.

Marti and Vik discover in one of the holes what appears to be a wine cellar but no wine bottles. The cave-in expert explains that the space wasn’t a wine cellar (to reveal what it was would spoil the surprise).

Dr. Gabi Kirkemo, an archaeologist, determines that the holes are not proper sites for archaeological digs. She finds the remains of Native Americans and concludes that the land is on a burial site.

The Smith land belonged to the Native Americans before the patriarch of the family, Idbash Smith, stole it from them. Based on Idbash’s journals, Josiah Smith, his grandson and the current patriarch of the family, learns how Idbash acquired the land and what happened to the slaves who were fleeing from slavery and stopped at Idbash’s place because it was supposed to be a way station on the Underground Railroad. Afraid the investigation might reveal the sordid history of how Idbash acquired the land and that Dr. Kirkemo’s findings will reveal it is a burial site, Josiah tries to use his nephew, a state senator, to quash the homicide investigation. When that fails, he tries to delay the investigation by refusing to answer questions.

The revelation that the land is a Native American burial site would complicate its sell to developers. In addition to Josiah, his daughter-in-law Eileen and Kat Malloy, his nephew’s mistress, also stand to profit from the sell of the land.

Isaiah Ben Mosheh, a Black man who converted to Judaism and changed his name to from Irwin, has been studying his family genealogy for 20 years. He needs to find an ancestor named Samuel to complete his family’s history. He is to old to travel to Chicago to search the records, so his grandson, Omari, gladly helps. Omari locates Samuel in the records and is standing on a corner in Chicago waiting for a bus to take him to Lincoln Prairie to meet with Josiah, whom he had called earlier to arrange a meeting, when he is stabbed.

In the unrelated subplot, Assistant State Attorney Anne Devney is reviewing the case of murderer Hector Gonzales, apparently to get him out of prison because he fears for his life. Two men attack Marti in the basement of the state building where she has gone to meet with Devney. She wins the struggle. Her injuries: cracked radius on the left wrist. The two muggers: “One broken nose, two black eyes, fractured ribs, broken toes, a fractured tibia, and swollen testicles.” The mugging appears to be a foreshadowing for Marti’s confrontation with Gonzales, who attacks her when she, Vik, and Devney meet with him in prison. The meeting is a setup, but we are not told by whom and why.

Despite the distracting subplot, which shows Marti’s toughness, Bland’s attempt to tell the history of the relationship among the three races in the US--Native Americans, African slaves, and Europeans--is admirable and makes Fatal Remains a novel worth reading.

“NOT YOUR TYPICAL KILLER”

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:07:00 +0000

In police procedural novels, the investigation usually drives the plot. Sometimes, however, the villain is so fascinating that you become more interested in him than in the investigation, and his actions, not the heroine’s, control what happens.
Adrian Quinn, an avenge-minded psychopath stalking homicide detective Marti MacAlister and other human prey, is the fascinating villain whose actions you follow in Eleanor Taylor Bland’s tenth Marti MacAlister novel Windy City Dying.

Adrian is a master of disguise and skilled at ambushing his human prey. He is, as Marti describes him, “not your typical killer.” He is an angry, educated Black man. He has several college degrees and graduated from Northwestern University at the head of his class. He also belonged to several humanitarian and social organizations in Chicago and received three humanitarian awards for community service.

Watching white men that he had trained get promoted over him and a white woman with less seniority and a lesser position get chosen over him at Wilburton and Associates, where he worked for 12 years, fueled Adrian’s anger. “Like any good black man, he smiled, praised the company, told everyone how pleased he was with is job, and accepted their praise, and even amazement, that he had come so far. Like any black man, he was angry.”

When a coworker revealed Adrian had embezzled money from the company, he killed the man and was convicted and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. Two months after he is paroled from prison, he sets in motion his plan to avenge himself on the people who were involved in his arrest and conviction.

Adrian at first plans to kill the arresting officers, one of which was Johnny MacAlister, Marti’s deceased husband, the judge, jury foreman, and jurors. However, he wants to make them suffer, so instead of killing those who participated in his arrest and trial, he decides to kill the person closest to them. Even though Johnny MacAlister is dead, he still stalks Marti because somebody must pay for what Johnny did.

In the prologue, without leaving footprints in the snow, Adrian manages to get into the house through a window of Joseph Ramos, who handled his case on appeal, and kill Graciela Lara, a foster child living in the Ramos’s home, whom he believes to be Ramos’s daughter. Jose Ortiz, another foster child living in the home, is found kneeling beside the body with blood on his clothes.

Homicide detective Marti MacAlister and her partner Vik Jessenovik are investigating the death of an old man who froze to death because the landlord refused heat when they are ordered to the Ramos house. Soon after the investigation of the Lara homicide begins, they are called to investigate the stabbing death of a railroad conductor, which leads to cooperation with the Chicago police department that reveals several murders and violent attacks in Chicago. The Chicago police records show Adrian’s connection to Johnny and other victims involved in his arrest and conviction, and he becomes the prime suspect.

Adrian’s fear of dogs prevents him from getting near the MacAlister house because the guard dog, Trouble, patrols the outside. He bides his time, and the moment to attack presents itself when, coincidently, he spots Marti and Ben on the Expressway on their way to Chicago and rams their car, leaving Ben in a coma and Marti slightly injured. The deadly confrontation between him and Marti occurs in the hospital.

Marti recognizes Jose as one of the five throw away kids she rescued from a murderer four years ago (Dead Time). From her recognition is born the subplot: prove Jose is innocent and locate the other four kids. Bland’s concern for throw-away children is preachy but her use of Jose to kick start the plot is good plotting and provides the reason for the reappearance of the five throw-away children.

Because Windy City Dying is a whydunit, the suspense depends not on revealing the identity of the killer but on the gradual revelation of his motive and the dramatic confrontation between him and Marti in the hospital, a not entirely convincing scene.

THEIR MOTHERS MADE THEM DO IT

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:20:00 +0000

A recently frozen arm with the hand attached launches the main plot in Whispers In The Dark, Eleanor Taylor Bland’s ninth novel in her Marti MacAlister series.

Within an hour after the discovery, the coroner reports the existence three arms and hands were found in the past. The four arms and hands date back to 1979, 1980, and 1994, and all four have arsenic in them. Blue paint on two of the hands and silver that photographers use on one suggest the owners were probably artists. The case gives Marti a glimpse of the dark side of the artistic community in Lincoln Prairie and provides her the opportunity to solve her first cold case.

Once she and her partner Matthew (Vik) Jessenovik establish that the owners of the arms and hands were artist, they begin their search for clues in the Lincoln Prairie historical society to get the names of local artist. Historical society volunteer, Nan Conser, gives them the history of the Artist Guild of which Lucy Carlisle, Arlene Johns, and Nan are members. Three nonmembers, Jimmy Binslow (Native American), Dexter Penwell (African American), and Carrie Pinkham (deaf African American), were invited to show their works when the guild held exhibitions but were excluded from membership. Nan Conser was also excluded at one time because she was from the wrong social class. She is added to the suspect list when Marti and Vik learn how she became a member.

Based on what the brother of a deceased artist tells her about the guild, Marti’s thinks
"The art guild sounded like a close-knit group, one that protected its image of itself and didn't allow anyone in who did not conform to that. They also sounded competitive, perhaps even petty. Dexter Penwell was just a sign painter, a cartoonist; Carrie Pinkham was just an imitation Grandma Moses-, and Jimmy Binslow? An amateur shutterbug maybe. Insiders and the excluded."

The two things the Guild members have in come is the exclusion from the Guild artists belonging to the wrong race or class, and their mothers pushed each of them to excel, the consequences of which, for one of them, are fatal.

Marti’s friend Sharon’s problem with her new husband is a second plot that could stand alone as a deadly romance adventure story and is only thematically connected to the main plot through Sharon’s mother who rejected her.

Sharon, believing she has met “Mr. Wonderful,” marries DeVonte Lutrell after knowing him for only a month. Before she goes with him to his home in the Bahamas, we get the back story involving her mother, Rayveena, a prostitute and drug addict who had Sharon when she was twelve years old. The neighborhood people raised Sharon, especially Marti’s mother. When we meet Rayveena, she is dying from AIDS and wants nothing to do with Sharon. Thus, we are to believe that Sharon is irresponsible and sometimes fickle because of a lack of a mother’s love.

Unaware of the nightmare that awaits her in the Bahamas, Sharon leaves Lisa behind and doesn’t tell her or Marti she is married. What she doesn’t know is that she is the latest in a long line of women whom DeVonte has married and killed for their money. The excitement rises when he tricks Lisa into coming to the Bahamas without Sharon’s knowledge. To his surprise, DeVonte discovers Lisa is smarter than her mother and the cat and mouse game between them begins when she escapes from him. To heighten the suspense most of the action in the Bahamas occurs in a hurricane.

Whispers in the Dark is enjoyable, and the two plot lines are thematically connected in that both reflect how mothers affect the lives of their daughters. The slow pace of the four arms plot line nicely contrasts with the faster pace of the Sharon vs DeVonte plot line.

The novel however is not one of Bland’s best. The second plot line reads as if it is to be a TV movie.

THE CASE OF TOO MANY MOTHERS

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:58:00 +0000

Marti’s observation in Eleanor Taylor Bland’s eighth novel in the Marti MacAlister series on the case she and Vik have wrapped up is that “there were too many mothers involved.” The mothers are two who may be evicted from a nursing home, a mother who overindulges her son, a mother who is the victim of her son’s abuse, and a mother who is the heroine. The point of the novel is that women who are abused in one way or another often Scream In Silence.

Homicide detectives Marti MacAlister and “Vik” Jessenovik of the Lincoln Prairie police department are called away from their investigation of a mailbox bombing to the scene of an arson-suspected fire at an abandon house because a body has been found in the debris. The dead woman is Virginia McCroft, a gadfly to politicians in Lincoln Prairie who constantly wrote letters complaining about various projects. The autopsy shows she died from a gunshot. At first, a political motive is suspected, and the detectives are not wanting for suspects. However, the evidence fails to reveal a political motive for murder, and the suspects are subsequently reduced to two. Oona Amstadt, daughter of Andrew Thornton, a partner in a business with Virginia’s late father is a suspect. Thornton had been paying Virginia $500.00 a month because he had promised her father he would. Virginia asks for more, which angers Oona, and evidence places her at the scene of the crime on the night Virginia died.

Virginia supported her mother and the mother of her boyfriend, both of whom are in the same nursing home. The boyfriend becomes a suspect after the detectives surmise that maybe he became angry because Virginia, who was having financial problems, might have threaten to stop paying the bill for his mother.

The mailbox bombing brings in the bomb squad and the ATF. Vik and Marti’s supervisor, Lieutenant Dirkowitz, orders them to work with the other two teams because no one knows if the arsonist and the bomber are the same person or if he had anything to do with Virginia’s death.

One of the mothers is Eighty year old Opal Jhanke, whose vision and hearing are failing. She fears her son and thinks he doesn’t have enough money to take care of her and may put her in a nursing home. The son treats her like a child, forcing her to lie in bed for days without food. When Vik and Marti, searching for the son, discover her, she is in very bad shape with “displaced shoulder, cracked ribs, and dehydration.” However, they aren’t sure how the son fits into their case.

Geoffrey Bailey, the youngest, wastrel son of a middle class Black family, provides humor and is instrumental in setting up the exciting ending involving one of the mothers. When we meet him, Geoffrey is unemployed and living at home with his overindulgent mother. His two older bothers and his aunt convince the mother that her baby boy should move out and be on his own. Arrangements are made for him to move into an apartment owned by another mother and to work collecting rents for Deacon Evans.

To keep money in his pocket, Geoffrey chose the life of con man rather than work for a living “because it was...fun.” Geoffrey’s presence increases the tension of the plot when he crosses paths with the Opal’s son after he sells her a fake security alarm. The son vows to get the “colored” man who cheated his mother and stalks Geoffrey.

I prefer that the detectives in detective stories catch the villain. Sometimes, though, having a citizen confront the villain, especially with humor that provides relief from the shocking suffering of those who scream in silence, works. It works even better if the citizen is a mother.