Reading post: The Conjure-Man Dies and four other mystery novels (and a short story)

My next book for the Classics Challenge is The Conjure-Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem by Rudolph Fisher, published in 1932. This fulfills category #6, "A Genre Classic." Like the books I read for my last challenge category, The Conjure-Man Dies is a novel of the Harlem Renaissance, and Rudolph Fisher was an important writer of that period. He wrote one mainstream novel and then this wonderful mystery -- and then he died, at the age of 37, in 1934. I was so disappointed when I learned that! I thought I'd discovered a great new mystery writer. But no. One and done. In addition to being an excellent writer, Fisher was a medical doctor, and his death may have been an indirect result of his research in radiology. He sounds like a brilliant, multi-talented man, and I'm so sorry he died so young.

Anyway. I originally had trouble finding a 50-or-more-year-old genre novel by a Black author, and had settled on a science fiction work, The Einstein Intersection by Samuel Delany, which was published in 1967. And that would have been fine. But I really wanted a mystery, since that's by far my favorite type of genre fiction. My first google searches for "classic Black mystery novels," etc., didn't produce anything that looked good to me, but while exploring Harlem Renaissance novels I found The Conjure-Man, and what a find it was. I'm still really tickled about the whole thing.

OK, so, the book. The Conjure-Man Dies is fun: a classic mystery with the flavor of old Harlem. The conjure-man, an African psychic, is seemingly found dead in the middle of a session with a client, and Detective Perry Dart of the Harlem police force arrives to investigate. He is aided in his task by Dr. John Archer, a physician who lives across the street from the house where the murder took place, and later by Bubber Brown, an unemployed street cleaner turned private detective who is also one of the suspects. Here Brown tries to explain to Dart how he decided to become a detective himself:

     "Well, y'see times is been awful hard, everybody knows that [note: it's 1932]. And I did have a job with the city--I was in the Distinguished Service Company---"

     "The what?"

     "The D. S. C.--Department of Street Cleaning--but we never called it that, no, suh. Coupla weeks ago I lost that job and couldn't find me nothin' else. Then I said to myself, 'They's only one chance, boy--you got to use your head instead o' your hands.' Well, I figured out the situation like this: The only business what was flourishin' was monkey-business---"

     "What are you talking about?"

     "Monkey-business. Cheatin'--backbitin', and all like that. Don't matter how bad business gets, lovin' still goes on; and long as lovin' is goin' on, cheatin' is goin' on too..."

(I can just see the string of novels that could have followed this one, where Detective Dart's formal investigations are aided by Brown's less orthodox ones, and Dr. Archer is called in for forensic and medical advice. It's such a shame that Rudolph Fisher died young. But I digress.) Of course, the mystery is eventually solved, with plenty of twists and turns, and I honestly didn't see the ending coming (maybe wasn't paying attention, because the clues are there). We get to visit lots of different milieus within Harlem. The whole thing was pure fun.

One thing that struck me about the book is that white people are almost entirely absent. They play a background role -- they ruined the conjure-man's life, for example -- but they aren't directly involved. I'm so hyper-sensitive about Black people and the police that I kept waiting for something awful to happen to one of the characters, Jinx, who ends up jailed for a time, or for a white cop to take over from Detective Dart and ruin everything, or for something bad to occur. But nothing like that happened. The police followed the law. There was no police brutality or corruption. I wonder if that's what it was really like in Harlem in 1932. Probably not, but hmm.

After reading that delightful novel, I thought I'd explore early Black mysteries a little more. The Conjure-Man Dies is believed to be the first mystery written by a Black author about Black people and published in book form. There was an earlier mystery by a Black author that had only white characters (The Haunting Hand by W. Adolphe Roberts, 1926), and there were two earlier mysteries by Black authors published only as serials in magazines. The second of these, The Black Sleuth by John Edward Bruce, has been edited and published in book form as part of the Northeastern Library of Black Literature, so I decided to read that (conveniently, Prospector has partially opened up again, so the book came whizzing to me from the University of Northern Colorado libraries).

The Black Sleuth is not really a mystery novel, it's a political tract about Black rights with a little bit of mystery thrown in at the end. It's also a big mess, ending before the crime (a jewel theft) has even been committed (for part of the novel, the sleuth, Sadipe Okukenu, follows the thieves because he thinks they are going to steal a diamond that he shouldn't even know exists). This is from Chapter 12:

Now, The Royal Arms was one of the new fashionable hotels of London that employed a black waiter, in compliment to its American patrons, who made it their habitat during the London season, and Sadipe, our hero, who was not ignorant of the plot which had been hatched to rob Captain De Forrest, had communicated to his chief his desire to be placed in this menial position.

There is simply no way for Sadipe to be "not ignorant of the plot" unless he is psychic. Furthermore, in Chapter 1, Captain De Forrest expresses horror that a Black person (he uses a different word) will be assigned to the case of his stolen diamond. This is followed by several chapters of flashback, and then suddenly we have Sadipe already investigating the crime before it is committed. I always wondered how so many 19th century authors could write and publish novels in serial form without getting mixed up or wanting to go back and change the beginning in order to have the ending work out right. I didn't see how it could be done unless you wrote the entire novel first and then just published it bit by bit. The Black Sleuth is an example of what can go wrong when you do it the other way. 

The editor of this volume, John Cullen Gruesser, has done a masterful job of analyzing and explaining the work. Even with all this effort, the story makes no sense, but that's part of the fun of it. The Black Sleuth was originally published in McGirt's Magazine, which Gruesser calls "a successful early black publication," edited by someone named James Ephraim McGirt. Its highest estimated circulation was 1500 and it lasted for only six years (1903-1909), but that apparently counts as successful. The last known episode of The Black Sleuth probably appeared in the July/August/September 1909 issue, even though the story was clearly not over. There was one issue after that, which for some reason did not contain an episode, and then the magazine folded. But get this, "only seventeen of the fifty or more issues of McGirt's that were published survive, and these are scattered among various libraries." Doesn't that just give you chills? For me, the story of the magazine and the serial evoke a whole world of Black intellectuals (the author, John Edward Bruce, was a journalist who wrote for over 100 Black publications) functioning as best they could in a hostile white world that didn't even deign to preserve their work for posterity. In the end I didn't care at all that the story itself was so goofy -- it's the backstory that's fascinating.

Moving forward in time, the next writer who gets mentioned in articles about early Black mysteries is Chester Himes, who wrote in the 1950s and 1960s. This puzzled me. Did no Black people write mysteries in the 1940s? In fact, they did, but they couldn't get published. One example is Hughes Allison, better known as a playwright, but who also wrote short stories, though he had trouble publishing them. His story "Corollary" appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1948. Another mystery story, "Imposture," appeared in Negro Digest in 1949 (just before the magazine folded, of course). I read "Corollary" and enjoyed it very much. Allison published no more mysteries before his death in 1966. I'm sure there were other Black writers of that time period, writing mysteries about Black people, who just couldn't get published.

OK, so Chester Himes it would have to be. His first "mystery" novel was A Rage in Harlem, published in 1957, and he went on to write several others featuring the Black detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. A Rage in Harlem isn't exactly a mystery. It's about criminals, and they are eventually tracked down by the detectives (and murdered by them, with no repercussions), but for the most part we know who did what to whom. There's a little confusion about some possible gold ore, and there are many questions about the motivations of Imabelle (the novel's original title was For the Love of Imabelle). But for the most part the "mystery" just isn't. The enjoyment of the book comes from the intricate way the pieces of the story fit together, and, more than anything, its humor.

Yes, humor! Before I read this novel, I had gotten the sense that Himes' mysteries were "hardboiled," but after reading this one, I wouldn't put them in that category. Hardboiled mysteries can contain humor, but they aren't slapstick. Himes, on the other hand, is funny. The character of Goldy, aka Sister Gabriel, amused me every time she/he appeared, despite the fact that she/he is addicted to cocaine and morphine and has to keep shooting up. I was reading the book in bed late at night and kept snorting with laughter, annoying my husband.

It's true that A Rage in Harlem takes place in a very seedy environment (Harlem has changed a lot since the Renaissance period). Many people are murdered, many other crimes are committed as well. There are white cops around, and they're nasty. Anyone who doesn't believe in the concept of systemic bias against Black people should read Himes. For instance, in this passage two white cops are looking for a knife that Imabelle used to cut a man who was hassling her. Two Black men are nearby, and one admits to having seen someone pick up the knife:

     "Where'd he go?" the first cop asked.

     The man pointed up Park Avenue.

     Both cops gave him a hard threatening look.

     "What did he look like?"

     The colored man turned to his companion.

     "What he look like, you think?"

     The second colored man disapproved of his companion's volunteering information to white cops about a colored boy.

     "I didn't see him," he said, showing his disapproval.

     Both cops turned to stare at him in rage.

     "You didn't seen him," one mimicked. "Well, God damn it, you're both under arrest."

A little later the cops let them go again, but this passage and others illustrate the unfair and illogical world the Black people in the story have to live in. However, in Himes' universe there is justice, it just gets doled out a little oddly. 

I enjoy reading mysteries for two reasons. First, I enjoy the mystery, the secret, the not knowing and then gradually discovering clues which solve the puzzle. But secondly, and perhaps equally important, I like the fact that at the end of the story, all's right with the world again. If the world is a bad place, it's still a bad place (I don't like "cozy" mysteries), but at least temporarily the good guys have untangled the mess and put things back where they belong. At the end of A Rage in Harlem, everything has been sorted out and put back in its place, and I felt very good when the story was over. Despite the body count.

I decided to continue this exploration of Black mystery fiction by re-reading Walter Mosley's outstanding Devil in a Blue Dress. Although published in 1990, Devil is set in 1948. Mosley has said that he based the character of Easy Rawlins, his detective, on his own father and other men he knew growing up in Los Angeles in the 1950s and 60s (Mosley was born in 1952). 

Mosley started writing fiction in his 30s and has published more than 25 novels since then. He's an excellent writer and has probably done more than anyone to interest white people in mysteries about Black people. I remembered liking Devil in a Blue Dress and its sequels very much, but I'd forgotten the details (mysteries do tend to run together in my mind). When I re-read it I was struck by something I'd forgotten: in the novel Easy Rawlins doesn't just learn how to be a private detective, he learns how to stand up for himself in a world that is bent and determined to keep him down. Easy has a voice in his head that helps him figure out what to do:

     The voice only comes to me at the worst times, when everything seems so bad that I want to take my car and drive it into a wall. Then this voice comes to me and gives me the best advice I ever get.

     The voice is hard. It never cares if I'm scared or in danger. It just looks at all the facts and tells me what I need to do.

...

     The voice has no lust. He never told me to rape or steal. He just tells me how it is if I want to survive. Survive like a man.

     When the voice speaks, I listen.

The voice is already a part of Easy before the book begins. But now he is often in dangerous situations and thus often needs to hear the voice. Over the course of the novel he seems to integrate the voice into his daily life and become more sure of himself. By the end you feel as though you've watched him mature into a fully human being, despite the attempts of white people to drag him down. The importance of this didn't hit me when I first read the book because I hadn't first read so much classic Black fiction. It's meaningful that the book is set in 1948, because white America was so oblivious to racism at that time. As the series goes on, we move forward in time and see how Easy lives through other eras in history, making the books an education in themselves, in addition to being really good mysteries. I realized after re-reading Devil in a Blue Dress, that I have only read the first four in the Easy Rawlins series and there are now TEN others, so I plan to read the rest. Eventually.

I was going to stop there (at least for this post), but decided to include one more Black mystery novel because I hadn't read one by a woman yet. Of course, I didn't even know there were any mystery series written by Black women until I started this project. One author who is often mentioned is Eleanor Taylor Bland, who died in 2010. On my most recent trip to the Bookworm, I picked up a copy of her first mystery, Dead Time (1992), started reading, and had trouble putting it down. It's a standard police procedural, with the main difference being that the hero is a Black woman and a single parent (her husband, also a cop, was apparently killed on the job). Marti MacAlister is an appealing character, and the story is a nice blend of gritty and cozy. I know I said I don't like cozy, but I don't mind if the main character has some joy in her life. 

Marti regularly runs up against people who don't think a Black woman could/should be a detective. In addition, she is partnered with an older white male detective who has his own ideas about what her role should be.

     Police work, as far as Vik was concerned, was divided into two categories: man's work, which involved supervising the evidence techs and all other personnel at the scene, and woman's work, interviewing people.

     Since her interpretation differed, Marti pulled on a pair of transparent rubber gloves and went over to look at the body. 

That excerpt gives a good sense of the tone -- Marti doesn't waste time getting angry about how she's treated, she just keeps quietly insisting on her rights. The plot of Dead Time is a little contrived, but I stayed interested to the end, even though I'd long since figured out who the killer was. I'm looking forward to reading more of this series.

So, as a result of this Challenge, I have added to my to-read list the other seven Chester Himes novels featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, the ten additional books in the Easy Rawlins series by Walter Mosley (plus perhaps some of Mosley's other books), and the 13 additional books by Eleanor Taylor Bland that feature Marti MacAlister. Both Himes and Mosley have had books made into movies, so I could watch those as well. In addition, I'd like to explore works by Barbara Neely, Gar Anthony Haywood, and Grace F. Edwards, who died just this year. I won't read these right away -- they'll go on the back burner until that time when I need a new mystery series to drown myself in.

Next up in my attempt to complete the Classics Challenge, a white author for a change -- William Faulkner, whose Absalom, Absalom I never managed to finish way back when, maybe 40 years ago. But first I may take a short break and read some of the other books piling up around me. Oh, the joy of having too many things to read!