AFRICAN AMERICAN MYSTERY/CRIME AUTHORS OPINIONS ON

The Amateur Becomes a Professional

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 04 May 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Benjamin January in the first three novels in Barbara Hambly’s historical

series about a free man of color in 1930s New Orleans is an amateur detective pressed into service to save himself, a relative, or a friend. In Sold Down The River, the fourth novel in the series, Benjamin, in a sense, becomes a professional investigator when he is offered payment for his services.

Simon Fourchet, the master who owned Benjamin, his mother, his father, and his sister on the Bellefleur plantation, has come to New Orleans to ask Benjamin’s help in finding out who is trying to kill him on his new plantation. Two events on the plantation convinced Fourchet that someone is trying to kill him. His butler Gilles, who had the habit of sneaking a nip of the master’s whiskey, died from poison after his recent nip. The slave Reuben died in the mill fire that Fourchet believes was deliberately started by someone who wants to ruin him. He offers Benjamin $500 for his services.

Benjamin hates the cruel slave master who broke his ribs when he was six and stuffed his mother Livia in a barrel as punishment for disobedience. St. Denis Janvier bought the family, except for the father, from Fourchet, freed them, and Livia became his mistress. Benjamin and Olympe took his surname. Janvier made sure Benjamin got the best musical and medical education.

He can’t understand why Livia wants him to help Fourchet simply so he can repay the $100 he owes her. However, he realizes the $500 will allow him to move out of her house into a place of his own. The opportunity to escape her nagging and arguments by his friend Rose and his sister Olympe persuade Benjamin to take the job. They point out that if the culprit is not caught, the white planters in the area might decide that a slave rebellion is in the making and go on a killing rampage. Thus, Benjamin could prevent a possible massacre.

Benjamin goes undercover as a field slave on Fourchet’s Mon Triomphe plantation. He knows how to be subservient and not reveal his intelligence to the white planters. But the other slaves are a different matter, for anyone of them, especially the house slaves, might discover he isn’t who he pretends to be and expose him. Another danger is a slave trader might see the six feet three inch tall, 200 pound Benjamin January as a profitable piece of merchandise—the perfect field slave—and sell him up the river to the owner of a cotton plantation.

Hambly continues her complex plotting in this novel depicting the hard life of slave on a sugar plantation, especially for the slaves of a brutal, tyrannical master, and the internal slave trade—slaves from Louisiana are sold to the cotton planters up river. The number of suspects further complicates the plot: Fourchet’s neighbor, all the slaves on the plantation, Fourchet’s two sons, his young wife, and the wife of his son Robert are suspects.

To give the plot authenticity and relief from the cruelty and violence depicted in the novel, she adds some humor in Sold Down The River through the field slave Harry, a trickster who barters goods with other slaves on other plantations. She also shows the men relaxing and joking, playing the dozens, a game I played as a boy and that is still played today. In the game, each player insults the other by talking about his relatives, especially his mother or sister. Benjamin secures his place among the slaves when he displays his skill at the game.

What I liked most about the novel is the irony of an ex-slave going to work for his former master who agrees to pay him.

Voodooism

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Graveyard dust is “a curse to the death”

No series of novels set in New Orleans would be complete without one about voodoo. Although voodoo is present in Barbara Hambly’s two previous Benjamin January novels, it is the explicit motif in the third novel in the series. In Graveyard Dust, the amateur detective’s Catholic faith is tested when someone tries to put a hoodoo spell on him.

Benjamin’s sister Olympe is arrested and charged with murder. She is accused of furnishing the poison a young wife allegedly used to kill her husband. Benjamin and those trying to help Olympe, including the voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, realize that the odds are against her. In the culture of the time, she is considered guilty because she is a voodooienne known among the voodoos as Olympia Snakebones. Benjamin also worries about Olympe’s health in the dirty, disease ridden jail because, though the authorities try to keep it quiet, Bronze John, as the yellow fever is called, is haunting the jail.

From Benjamin’s perspective: “Isaak Jumon was dead. Celie Jumon had bought something from Olympe, poisoner and voodooienne. That might be all the jury would hear.” He must find the real killer before the trial or Olympe is doomed.

Once he is on the trail of the real killer, danger comes at Benjamin from two sources, creating the tension that kept me reading. First is a physical threat from a paid assassin, a mountain man named Killdevil Ned, that causes Benjamin to constantly look over his shoulder as he traverses the rough and swampy areas of New Orleans. Killdevil is dangerous but not as threatening psychologically.

Benjamin fears most the psychologically threat because it plays on his mind. It comes from Mambo Oba, a voodooienne who makes evil jujus. When Benjamin finds a chicken foot under his mattress and graveyard dust on the floor in his room, he panics. He is a Catholic but all his life he has been around voodoo and is often ambivalent when confronted by the practice of voodoos, sometimes he fears it, and other times he doesn’t know what to think. He tells himself that voodoo isn’t real, that is superstition. But, true to his Catholic faith, he refuses Marie Laveau’s help because he doesn’t believe the gris-gris she gives him will protect him from the juju he found in his room. God is his protector. For

God would keep him safe. In times past he’d worn a gris-gris Olympe had made for him and had prayed, half in jest, to Papa Legba as he’d now and them addressed the classical gods, like Athene or Apollo. But lately he’d put the gris-gris away, unsure what it meant to wear such a thing. To seek the help of the loa was, at beast, an act of mistrust in the goodness of the power of God.

And yet, he fears the voodoo demons.

...January had dreamed...of the demon Omulu, and of the red eyes watching him from within a sheep skull clotted with dry blood and ants. Waking, he had had to fight the desperate urge to tear mattress and pillows and bedding to pieces lest there be feathers in them twisted into the shape of a rooster or a cat. Lying in the darkness he had tried to think of all the places in the room where balls of black wax and graveyard dust might be secreted.

When he needs him the most, the boss voodoo god, Papa Legba, helps Benjamin as he chases a bad guy through the swamps. Hambly renders the scene so skillfully, that I wasn’t sure if Benjamin was communicating with Papa in reality or a hallucination.

In Graveyard dust Hambly continues the high quality of her storytelling through her skillful blend of plot and character. She makes the supernatural seem a part of the natural order of things. Most of all, the war between Christianity and voodoo going on in Benjamin’s mind provides more insight into his personality, revealing the complexity of his character. Rose, the free woman of color that Benjamin showed great affection for in Fever Season reappears. Will the two of them ever get together?

The Disease of Slavery

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 05:30:00 +0000

Fever Season, the second novel in Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series, is about slavery, murder, robbery, and kidnapping. The title refers to Bronze John, as the yellow fever is called, and his cousin cholera who invade New Orleans every summer, moving like ghost through the city, permeating every household, every street, attacking slaves and masters.

Though Bronze John's hand touched everyone, white, black, and colored, it was mostly the whites who died of it and, of them, more often the whites who'd flocked into New Orleans from the United States--the rest of the United States, January Corrected himself--or from Europe.

Slavery, too, is a disease that affects both slave and master, but often has a more deleterious effect on the masters, causing them to think of fellow human beings as animals and sometimes to be treat worse than animals.

When Bronze John comes calling most of the rich white folks with their slaves leave the city. Benjamin January, amateur detective and free man of color, wouldn’t leave even if he could. He remains and helps care for the victims of the fever at the Charity Hospital, comforting the living and helping carry away the dead. He again finds himself in trouble when he agrees to delivery a message from Cora, a slave woman, to her husband Gervase, a slave in the house of a Creole woman, Delphine Lalaurie, whose two daughters Benjamin gives piano lessons.

Benjamin soon discovers that Cora is considered a runaway and wanted by the law. She is accused of killing her master Otis Redfern, trying to kill his wife Emily, and stealing a string of pearls and $5000. Before he can confront her to get the real story, for he feels something is wrong, she disappears. Even Rose Vitrac, a free woman of color who runs a school for girls and knew Cora when she was a girl of 13, has not seen her. However, Cora left $190.00 and a string of pearls that belonged to Emily in a bag in a desk in Rose’s school. To complicate matters further for Benjamin, Rose, whom he is growing fond of, also disappears.

Slaves whose masters allow them to work and sleep in the city to earn money to buy their freedom and some free persons of color with no connection to anyone are also disappearing. From the boatman Natchez Jim who carries people and goods up and down the river, Benjamin confirms his suspicions that someone is kidnapping slaves and blacks who have no one to ask about them. Natchez Jim tells him, “A runaway is money out of someone’s pocket. And maybe money in someone else’s as well.” The people being kidnapped are sold to owners of cotton plantations in the Missouri Territory. Benjamin is thrown into deep depression and fears for Cora and Rose.

When trouble comes to Benjamin, it comes in bunches. A jack-legged doctor named Emil Barnard whom he caught stealing from the dead victims of the fever accuses him of killing a man who was stabbed in a fight and whom Benjamin tried to help by stopping the bleeding. Barnard doesn’t stop harassing him after the judge throws the case out. He plants stories in the newspapers accusing Benjamin of murder and of insulting to her face a very important lady (white of course). The result is Benjamin loses his piano pupils, and the agent who assigns music jobs limits him to the lesser balls and doesn’t hire him, the best piano player in New Orleans, to perform at the opera. Benjamin suspects someone with strong connections in the Creole and American communities that go all the way to city hall has a grudge against him and Barnard is just a pawn.

To maintain the suspense in Fever Season Hambly withholds the answers to three questions:

Who killed Otis Redfern and tried to poison Emily Redfern?

Where are Cora and Rose?

Who is Benjamin’s enemy?

The answers are indeed surprising.

The four women who drive the main and subplots are a complicated mixture that kept me wondering what would they do next. The issue of slavery is depicted through Cora. Emily Redfern represents the Americans desire for social acceptance in the Creole culture. Delphine Lalaurie, the Creole woman, is the most powerful character in the novel next to Benjamin. Rose Vitrac, free woman of color, shows that not all mulattos become mistresses. Finally, there is the legendary Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.

Fever Season continues the enjoyable storytelling that Hambly began in A Free Man of Color.

A Surprising Novel

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 14:14:00 +0000

I would not have believed it if someone had told me that a white female writer of detective fiction had created a believable African American male character, especially in 19^th century New Orleans. Yet, that is exactly what Barbara Hambly has done in her first detective novel set in News Orleans in the 1830s. She gets into the very mind and soul of her black male character, Benjamin January. I learned about Hambly and the Benjamin January series through an article “A Free Man of Color: The Benjamin January Mysteries” by the very knowledgeable critic Jon L. Breen in the Mystery Scene magazine (issue No. 125; Summer 2012).

Hambly, a prolific novelist, has written novels in many genres—historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and romance fiction. She has three mystery novels in the Abigail Adams series, which she published under the pseudonym Barbara Hamilton. She began the first of eleven novels in the Benjamin January series in 1997 with A Free Man of Color (ISBN 0-553-10258-3).

In 1830, Benjamin January, all six feet, three inches of him, reluctantly returned home to New Orleans after living 16 years in Paris, France because, after his wife Ayasha died, he was lonely and depressed. In Paris, though he couldn’t practice his profession as a doctor and had to make his living as a piano player, he was free. He didn’t have to bow before every white person he met and didn’t have to hide his intelligence. Back in New Orleans, he was a freeman of color but steal had to put on the mask and not reveal his healing skills. He continued to make his living playing the piano at the many balls and the opera.

January and his full sister Olympe are the children of a mulatto mother and African father. When their father disappeared, their mother was sold to St. Denis Janvier, a Creole, and became his mistress, giving him a daughter, January’s half sister, Dominique. Janvier saw to it that Benjamin received an education in medicine and music. Although he is a free man, Benjamin can’t practice medicine because his skin is “cold black.” To earn money, he plays the piano at the balls and opera and gives lessons to young white children.

Benjamin’s trouble begins when he is the last person seen with the octoroon beauty Angelique Crozat who is later found dead in her dressing room where she was preparing to perform at the Blue Ribbon Ball. She makes a beautiful and expected corpse because she is “a thoroughly detestable woman…” Though Benjamin suspects the Creole gentleman who is courting her, trying to persuade her to become his mistress, is the murderer, he soon learns he is the main suspect and begins playing hide and seek with the authorities and the slave traders. He has to find the murderer of Angelique before the authorities or slave traders catch him. The authorities will mostly likely hang him. The slave traders certainly will sell him back into slavery. Benjamin’s predicament gives birth to his new profession: he becomes an amateur detective, and his first client is himself.

Reading A Free Man of Color is like taking a slow stroll through 1830s New Orleans. Hambly does an outstanding job describing the social milieu based on class, race, and nationality, and describing the balls, their purpose, and the type of women who attend them to catch a protector (Creole man whose mistress they will become). The wealth of detail paints an authentic picture of New Orleans society in the 1830s.

The great achievement of this exciting novel is the protagonist. Dark-skinned Benjamin January is a complex character who has to navigate three worlds: that of the slaves, that of free persons, and that of the whites (Creole and American). He has to carefully maneuver around the rules: one set for whites, one set for coloreds, and one set for blacks. He also has to deal with the uneasy relationship with his light-skinned mother, which reflects how skin color operates within the black families. Through it all, it becomes a good amateur detective.

Don’t Give the Devil Sympathy

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 14:17:00 +0000

Start with serial killers, mix in drug dealers and gangbangers, then stir with Washington DC political intrigue, and you have the plot ingredients of Sympathy for the Devil (ISBN 0609608495).

Christopher Chambers, author of Sympathy for the Devil, is a Washington D.C. native. According to the short biography on Amazon, he is a professor and “Lecturer in Journalism and Media Studies at Georgetown University. His innovative courses include titles such as ‘The Decline of the Public Intellectual & the Rise of the Pundit in Modern Journalism,’ and ‘Expeditions, Executions & Exposes: Establishing a sense of Place and Personality in Travel, Crime Writing and Investigative Reporting.’ He has lectured on issues in communications, culture & the media and race across the United States for organizations such as Black Entertainment Television (BET), the National Association of Black Journalists, and Princeton University. He writes for theRoot.com, Uptown Life magazine and the City Paper (Washington). Professor Chambers is a former U.S. Justice Department attorney, and a graduate of Princeton University.” You might want to check out his blog.

FBI Agent Angela Renee Bivens, the African American protagonist in Sympathy for the Devil, along with two other Black female agents, filed a discrimination lawsuit against the FBI and the Department of Justice. Unlike the other two women who accepted monetary settlements, Angela continued her case and won a jury trial. Her foil, Victor Styles, who was her instructor in law school and is now the Deputy Director of the Bureau, does not like losing, so instead of assigning her to one of the field offices that she requested, he offers an assignment in the FBI’s Metropolitan Washington Field Division. However, she will not do any investigative work. She will serve as liaison between the FBI and the Washington DC Metro Police Department and report directly to him about what the MPD is doing. Anxious to get back to work, Angela, against her lawyer’s advice, accepts the offer.

Neither she nor Styles expects her to get involved trying to stop a serial killer or killers who is killing drug dealers and gangbangers, and kidnapping and murdering teen age girls. The Metro Police Department and the FBI believe the killings are due to war among the gangs. They suggest two teenage girls found stuffed into a Porta Potti were killed as retaliation by one gang against another gang. Against orders, Angela and her partner Kristi, a Barbie Doll-like White woman, began gathering clues that, to them, seem to indicate one or maybe two persons are doing the killings.

I was enjoying the story even with a couple of kinks, for instance an escape from a police station, a car chase, and a shootout, all involving tiny Angela, challenged the suspension of my disbelief. Despite this challenge to my disbelief, I was still emotionally involved watching Angela chase down clues that would lead to the identity of the killers and anticipating the final confrontation between her and the killers when Chambers dumps a hackneyed ending on me that I’ve seen in to many movies and TV shows and read in too many thriller novels. Despite the gunplay, the helicopters and explosions, the near dead condition of Angela, the ending rather than conveying excitement to keep your heart pounding slides into dullness that puts you to sleep.

I was not encouraged to read the second Angela Bivens novel A Prayer for Deliverance: An Angela Bivens Thriller (ISBN: 0609608509) but, as always, I advise you to read the novel for yourself. If any of you out there in readerville decides to read the second novel, please advise me if it would be worth my time and effort.  

A Few Random Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 05:00:00 +0000

MERRY CHRISTMAS:

Now that that traditional greeting is out of the way, I can get on with the post for this month. I had planned this month to post a critical review of the first novel in the Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series. I decided instead to review it in February 2013 and to review the other nine novels in the series in remaining nine months of 2013. The 10 novels feature Hambly’s believable 19^th century African American detective.

Why February? Well, I have to post my review of a novel that I read in November before embarking on my adventure through 1830s New Orleans with Benjamin January.

Every December, to give my brain a break, I relax from reading crime fiction by reading a so-called literary novels. I choose the novels at random. This year I plan to read two novels—Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and Tumbling, a first novel by Diane McKinney-Whetstone. If I can find the time, I might read one of the novels I have on my Kindle or Nook. On the Kindle, I have current crime fiction, and on the Nook, I have crime novels from the 19^th century that I downloaded from the Gutenberg website.

Well, that’s it for this short and sweet post.

All Things Revealed

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 05:00:00 +0000

I chose the novel All Things Hidden (2004) by JudyCandis because of the title, which is from 1 Corinthians 4:5, and I was prepared to reject it because of the Biblical reference. At the same time, I wondered how a religious theme would play out in a police procedural novel. I’m not antireligious, but when I sense a religious motif in a crime novel, I cringe because I feel I’m about to be preached at. Is it possible to write a such a novel without seeming to preach. Maybe, but Candis has failed to do so.

Candis introduces the motif of Christian faith in the opening scene. The protagonist enters a crack house where body has been found and has a moment of panic despite her faith in God:

God had not given her the spirit of fear. Jael knew this like she knew there were sixty-six books in the Bible. She knew this like she knew the exact hour and second that she accepted Christ as her Lord and Savior. More important, she knew this like she knew God's Word was eternal and true. Yet the pounding of her heart was so rapid, so profound, it threatened to burst through her rib cage.

Jael Reynolds, the only Black female in the police department of Dadesville, Florida, is the lead detective in the investigation of the killings of three drug dealers. It appears dealers are being target, and she speculates that it might be a war among them. She also speculates that it might be a serial killer or a Black vigilante taking the law into his own hands. Her investigation puts her and her son in jeopardy as she gets closer to discovering the killer and the diabolical motive.

All Things Hidden is a novel Christians may well enjoy because of the motif of a woman of faith who, with the help of God, defeats the forces of evil. To make sure the point of the novel is not missed, the narrator reminds the reader that Jael is "in the clutches of a serious spiritual battle. Warfare at the highest level." She is named after the warrior woman who helped “the Israelites in battle by nailing their enemy king’s head to the ground” (Book of Judges, 4:17-23).

All Things Hidden reminded me of the story of Job, who never wavered in his faith. Jael is put through many trials and at times wonders if God hears her prayers. After a while, the repetition of her internal battle with her faith, altering between feelings of doubt and confirmation, becomes tedious and at times slows the action. The novel reads like a book on how to write a novel: put the heroine in one dangerous situation after another.

All Things Hidden didn’t encourage me to read Candis’s other three novels, but if you, dear reader, enjoy stories with religious themes, then you might enjoy Colorblind (1998), Still Rage (2001), and Blood Offering (2002).

The Truth is Hard

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 05:00:00 +0000

My favorite character is back in Charlotte Carter’s second novel featuring amateur detective, Cassandra. The twenty-year old college student I met in Jackson Park who made me want to slap the taste out of her mouth gets her grandaunt Ivy and Ivy’s husband Woody involved in another dangerous mystery-thriller in Trip Wire.

A few months after solving the 20 year old murder of a White school teacher, Cassandra and her grandaunt Ivy and granduncle Woody investigate the murder of her best friend Wilton and his White girl friend Mia in a hippie commune where Cassandra lives with six other people. To prove she is independent and to annoy her aunt and uncle, she moved out of their home and into the commune, an apartment on Chicago’s north side. She met Wilton, the black member of the commune, in Lincoln Park during Bobby Seale’s appearance at the Democratic Convention in 1968.

In her usual impetus and annoying way, Cass can’t rest until she finds out who killed Milton and Mia. Like most 20-year-olds in the 1960s, she mistrusts adults, especially, Ivy and Woody as well as the Chicago police, including her uncle’s detective friend Jack Klaus. During her investigation she discovers a Black militant organization called “The August 4 Committee” whose mission is to kill White Army officers they consider racists and who, they believe, murdered Black soldiers in Vietnam. She also learns about spies for the FBI and snitches for the Chicago police.

Carter deftly describes Chicago in late 1968 and by extension the entire nation as seen through the eyes of Cassandra.

My ROOM WAS GRAY AND MUSTY FROM CIGARETTE SMOKE. IT was long past sunrise, but light was hard to come by. The news issuing from my clock radio was just as sunless and heavy-

Death toll for the week so far: 80. That was just "our" side. No figures on how many of the enemy incinerated. A Christmas truce was in the offing, and Bob Hope was on the way to Saigon.

Other headlines: Two children and their welfare mother asphyxiated. Mix poor people with no heat and a faulty gas oven. Result, death. A drunk driver killed four teens on the highway.

In Cassandra, Carter has created the personality of an idealistic 20-year-old Black female rebelling against the system and having to learn to accept the truths she finds in the system. While talking about how drug dealers operate with Henry Waddell, the old gangster in Jackson Park, who has some past connection to Ivy and Woody, Cassandra realizes that she and Wilton had drifted apart:

Suddenly I realized how far away from Wilton I had traveled in just a few days. Maybe it was just a matter of knowing, accepting in a way I hadn't before, that he was dead and forever lost to me. But I don't think that was the whole answer. Accepting the death meant acknowledging how far away he had gone from me. What I was remarking on now was how far away I had gone from him. Curious that of all the friends and strangers I'd spoken to, it should be Henry Waddell who triggered this insight.

Unlike her Greek namesake, it is not others who will not accept what she is saying, but Cassandra who must finally accept the truth of what she learns about herself and her grandaunt and granduncle.

If Charlotte Carter wrote another novel featuring Cassandra, I couldn’t find it on the Internet. So, if you know of another Cassandra novel, please let me know.

The Real Charlotte Carter Is Back

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 05:00:00 +0000

I felt Carter wasted her talent in the semi-pornographic novel Walking Bones. She redeems her self in Jackson Park, in which she returns to the detective novel. This time the amateur detective is not the New York street musician Nanette Hayes. She is a smart mouth, wonderfully irritating, intelligent twenty-year-old freshman college student in Chicago named Cassandra. She never knew her mother or father, and, when her grandmother with whom she was living died, went to live with her grandaunt and her husband in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.

Cassandra, Ivy, and Woody become amateur detectives when Clay Jackson from their old neighborhood asks Woody to find his missing granddaughter Lavelle Jackson. Lavelle disappeared during the riots following Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. She was last seen rushing out of the corner grocery store where she had gone to buy groceries for Clay. The owner found a high school ring among the groceries she dropped and, after some persuasion, gives it up to Woody. After reading the inscription on the inside of the ring, Woody decides to drop the case.

Cassandra, however, feels Mr. Clay deserves to know what happened to Lavelle and insists that Woody find her, or she will continue without his help. This naïve child doesn’t understand that Woody is reluctant to continue the search because it might lead to the family’s involvement in the investigation of the 20 year old murder of a white school teacher and conflict with members of the Chicago police department. She will also discover the involvement of some of her classmates in a black militant organization called “Root.”

Cassandra is an irritating, rebellious, intelligent 20 year old who, like most young people her age, thinks she knows everything, and yet, she is wonderfully fascinating. She describes herself: “I was ugly misshapen, red haired, and walked with a light limp.” She also considers herself 20 pounds overweight. She is the engine that keeps the rapidly moving plot rushing to an unexpected ending, especially for her.

Oh yes, Charlotte Carter, the real detective novelist, is back with a sort of coming-of-age detective novel.

Psycho/Erotic Thriller Misfires

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:43:00 +0000

On May 29, 2009, I posted reviews of Charlotte Carter’s novels featuring her smart, beautiful, Black amateur detective Nanette Hayes. I had not, at the time, read her three other novels: Walking Bones, Jackson Park, and Trip Wire. Starting with Walking Bones, I’ll be reviewing the novels in my next three post.

Carter is a writer of detective stories. Walking Bones is a significant departure from her detective novels. Although one character is a detective, and a crime is committed, it doesn’t drive the plot. Lecherous sexual behavior does. It is as though Carter decided to experiment with a different genre, writing an erotic thriller to test her talent. The experiment, if it is that, is unsuccessful. I admire her for taking the risk, and I have to accept that doing so means she produced a very disappointing novel. No matter how good a novelist is, not all that she writes will be of a quality that matches her talent.

The action in this awful erotic thriller opens with a black woman slapping a middle-aged white man in the face with a glass after he makes the crude remark that he likes black cunt. His crude remark and her response ignites a chain of events that will set three people on a deadly collision course: the protagonist Nettie Rogers, her gay friend Rufe Beard, and the alcoholic, sexual deviant White man Albert Press.

Six Foot tall, light-skinned Nettie Rogers came to New York to be a model, but when she started to gain weight, her modeling career went down the drain and she into deep depression. Her friend Rufe decided that sleeping with strange men whom he procured for her would cure the depression. Nettie quits having unsatisfying sex with strangers because it increases rather than cures her depression. She finds satisfaction and ease of mind in making and selling handbags from which occupation she makes a modest living.

Albert, on the other hand, becomes obessessed with Nettie and lies to the investigating detective about what happened to him in the bar, alleging he doesn’t remember. He tracks her down through Rufe and begins showering her with gifts. We see how dangerous he is through his past relationship with a young White woman he hired and mentored in his publishing company. The relationship reveals his sexually deviant dark side.

Rufe suspects Albert of being a sexual deviate and believes he will harm Nettie. His big brother-type protective instinct toward her takes over. He must save her from herself and Albert. This creates rising tension and suspenseful anticipation: What is going to happen when the paths of the three characters, Nettie, Albert, and Rufe collide? Any further discussion of the plot of this highly disappointing novel would be a spoiler.

Walking Bones is not “exhilarating, funky, sensuous,” as the blurb on the front cover from the Cleveland Plain Dealer claims, but it is “downright vulgar.” I couldn’t make up my mind as to whether it is literary erotica or literary pornography. Since I don’t think Carter wrote the novel to satisfy readers’ possible prurient desires, I tried to see some social or culture significance. Possibility: Expose White men’s perverse hunger for Black women, which is speculation on my part.

Walking Bones is not up to Carter’s talent.

The Hunter Becomes The Hunted

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 11:50:00 +0000

Camacho’s first thriller, The Payback Assignment, disappointed me. He redeemed himself in his second thriller. Orion is packed with as the Electrifying Duo, Morgan Stark and Felicity O’Brien, battle a big, handsome, dangerous Irishman. Unlike the villain in The Payback Assignment, Ian Michael O’Ryan, who got the nick name Orion, after Orion, the great hunter in Greek mythology, while hunting big game in Africa, is bigger than life both physically and mentally.

Felicity’s Uncle Sean Sullivan, the priest of a small village in Ireland, comes to the U. S. to hire Morgan to help stop O’Ryan, whom he considers a terrorist, from recruiting the young men in the village. He believes O’Ryan wants to revive the IRA and restart ”the troubles” (religious wars). He doesn’t want O’Ryan killed, just stopped.

When the Electrifying Duo arrive in the village, Morgan, a Black man in Ireland, knows he’ll have to out drink and out fight the biggest dude in the pub to be accepted. He challenges and defeats Max Grogan in arm wrestling and drinking contests, thus becoming a hero to the patrons.

Once he is comfortable with the residents of the village, he and Felicity devise plans to stop O’Ryan. She devises the first of three plans. O’Ryan gets money he needs for his operation in Ireland from organizations that sponsor terrorism. She cleans out his bank accounts, which lack of ready cash puts him in a bind. Sorry, to explain how she does it would be a spoiler.

Morgan directs the operation to deprive O’Ryan of arms he has bought for a Middle Eastern terrorist. When the shipment arrives on the Irish coast, with the help a group of gypsies among whom Felicity lived after running away from home when she was 16, he makes sure the arms will not get to O’Ryan. O’Ryan must refund the customer’s money.

To get the money, he enters a motorcycle race in France, which he has never lost. Morgan enters the race under the Seagrave Industries sponsorship and riding one of their bikes. His objective is not to win but to make sure O’Ryan loses. Of course he knows O’Ryan will have his henchmen station along the course to take out any rider in the lead. A fact that spices up the scenes of the race.

O’Ryan doesn’t take Morgan’s interference very well. His men later ambush Morgan, who takes out three of them before they subdue him. O’Ryan holds Morgan on an island off the coast of southern France. Believing Morgan works for a government agency, he enjoys torturing him to try to get him to reveal which agency.

With her partner missing, Felicity goes into action. She doesn’t accept the possibility that he might be dead. he is too far away for her to sense his presence. But she is able from the direction in which the van fled to start out on the trial. She and Paul continue to the coast until she senses she is close, and learns about an isolate island. Once she is on the island and inside the house, she tangles with O’Ryan.

But it isn’t over. As Felicity is wheeling Morgan out of the hospital, they feel danger but too late to get back in the hospital. A man named Youssef and his henchmen stop them. The electrifying duo, Claudette, and Paul face their guns. Youssef was O’Ryan’s customer and now he blames Morgan for causing him to lose the weapons. Again, I can’t be a spoiler.

Camacho makes sure his readers are on the side of good when he has O’Ryan suggest that Morgan is no different from him—both are in a way mercenaries. However, Morgan considers what he does—helping other honest folks—as an honor. O’Ryan’s terrorist activities are about power. Orion is better than The Payback Assignment because it is better plotted and the villain is more worthy of the Electrifying Duo’s many talents.

The introduction of O’Ryan’s customer at the end disappointed me. It was a loose end that didn’t need wrapping up.

The Electrifying Duo

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 13:14:00 +0000

Morgan is a Black mercenary skilled in the martial arts and knowledgeable about all types of weapons. He is a walking arsenal. He carries his guns and knives in his jacket, belt, and boots. Like any expert, he believes that “A craftsman’s got to respect his tools.”

Felicity is a beautiful red-haired, green-eyed Irish international thief knowledgeable about jewelry, fine art, and security systems. She is a walking burglary tool kit, carrying her tools on her person and in her hair. She is “both a technician and an artist, the best at what she did….”

The electrifying duo becomes a team after a mean SOB named Adrian Seagrave double crosses both of them. Morgan is left stranded in the jungle after he assassinates a leader in Belize for Seagrave. All six men on his team of mercenaries are killed.

Three men kidnap Felicity as she is escaping from a house carrying a diamond brooch Seagrave hired her to steal. They relieve her of the brooch and leave her stranded in the Belize jungle. Morgan and Felicity team up to find and punish Seagrave.

In a coincident that works well for the plot, Morgan, driving the jeep he used to escape from the Belize police, happens upon Felicity, and rescues her from a long walk home to Los Angeles.

The relationship between the Irish beauty and the Black mercenary makes this bland novel worth reading. The psychic connection between them is not the kind that allows them to talk to each other without speaking. Morgan is good at accurately estimating distances. Felicity has an accurate sense of time. The real connection is their physic ability to sense danger and to sense when one or the other is in danger. This ability seriously interfere with their becoming lovers.

The Payback Assignment is not one of Camacho’s best. It succeeds in making the two main characters interesting but the plot is run of the mill; they spend the entire novel escaping from traps Seagrave’s thugs lay for them. Criminals versus criminals is good plot situation but incidents have to vary. The hero and heroine escaping trap after trap becomes too repetitious. There are no surprises and no twists.

Blood Will Tell

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 05:00:00 +0000

In Blood and Bone, Austin S. Camacho’s fourth novel in his Hannibal Jones series, the Washington PI takes on a missing person case.

The novel is a sort of family saga. When he is hired to find, Jacob Mortimer, the estranged son of a Black millionaire Harlan and father of 18 year old Kyle, Hannibal has to work against time. Kyle needs a bone marrow that only Jacob can provide, or he will die in a few weeks. Abandoning his wife Camille and new born son 18 years ago, Jacob disappeared with a woman called Barbie and some of his father’s valuable coins.

In what starts out as a routine missing person case, Hannibal soon finds himself tangling with gangsters in New Jersey, helping solve a murder, and preventing a scheme to defraud Harlan Mortimer of some of his millions. His search for Jacob takes him from Washington DC to Baltimore, New Jersey, Texas, Virginia, and finally Mexico. Along the way, he discovers a young woman in Baltimore who is also looking for Jacob. In New Jersey and Virginia, he tangles with a two mobster brothers. In Texas and Mexico, his journey ends in a confrontation with some very bad people.

Camacho opens the novel in his usual violent style, which is also the beginning of the subplot. Hannibal beats two henchmen guarding the pimp Floyd in the Tip Top club so he can negotiate the release of an 18 year whore named Jewel who wants to get out of the business. Jewel will later get the evil eye and Hannibal the silent treatment from Cindy when she sees Jewel standing in Hannibal’s kitchen.

Camacho’s inventiveness is again on display, and he doesn’t waste words on pointless descriptions. He keeps the pace moving and sustains the suspense until the very end. The subplot involving finding Jewel’s mother seems at first as though it is merely there as relief from the violent action of the main plot but Camacho skillfully weaves it into the central plot while showing the evolving relationship between Hannibal and his girl friend Cindy.

The intricate plot of Blood and Bones with the clever twists and surprise identity of the bad guys will hold your interest to the very last word. Like me, you probably will want the story to continue even as Camacho neatly wraps up all the loose e

An Undamaged Novel

noreply@blogger.com (Louis A. Willis) — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 05:00:00 +0000

Austin S. Camacho’s third novel, Damaged Goods, in his Hannibal Jones series, is not as successful as his debut novel, Collateral Damage, but is much better than The Troubleshooter.

Millionaire Benjamin Blair hires PI troubleshooter Hannibal Jones to find the psychopath who seduced his Black maid Anita Cooper and stole from her a formula worth millions of dollars that her pharmaceutical chemist father left her. Although Benjamin is generous toward his maid, he also wants the formula for his company.

Vernon Cooper, a Black pharmaceutical chemical genius, came up with a formula for curing addictions but kept it from his employer, a large pharmaceutical company. While serving time in prison for a hit and run accident, he meets Roderick Mantooth to whom he reveals the existence of the formula and the fact he left it with his daughter.

Rod creates the “damaged goods” of the title, women he seduces using BDSM, (bondage, discipline or domination, submission, masochism) to make them his slaves. The problem Hannibal faces is how to get into Rod’s group to find where he has hidden the formula. The case takes him into the unfamiliar, unsettling, and dangerous world of BDSM. Hannibal as a bad dude into kinky sex games while maintaining his integrity is the force driving the plot toward an unexpected and disappointing conclusion.

I enjoyed the humor of Hannibal posing as a bad dude into BDSM, and his attempt to make a rap CD to impress his young teenage friend Monty, the grandson of Mother Washington, the matriarch of the neighborhood where they live. He wants to save Monty from a life on the mean streets of Washington DC.

Hannibal has in his pocket an engagement ring and plans to ask girlfriend Cindy to marry him, which makes for pleasant suspense of will he or will he not pop the question. A married hardboiled PI would be a nice departure from tradition.

Although Damaged Goods is a routine crime story with no surprises (the ending ,though unexpected, isn’t a surprise), it is still an exciting novel with plenty of the usual fisticuffs and gunplay characteristic of Camacho’s other novels, and well worth your time if you like the action of watching the hero take down the bad guy as I do.

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.