It’s always a great time to explore options and find a new mystery
author. Perhaps it’s time to look more closely at African American mystery
authors. I am sure you have read some of these authors’ books, but hopefully
this will introduce you to some other great mystery authors that you may have
missed who are either African American authors or authors who have written
novels with black detectives (or both).
Reading right now:
Ishmael Reed’s “The Last Days of Louisiana Red” centers around private eye Papa LaBas who was also the hero of “Mumbo Jumbo.” I have already read “Mumbo Jumbo” so if you haven’t I would suggest you start with that book. Both these books were written in the 1970s and are hardly traditional mysteries or traditional novels, but are amazing works of satire, racial commentary, and surrealism. Reed writes poetry, jazz, and important books. He taught at Berkeley for over 30 years. He once said that “a black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
“Ace Boon Coon” arrives on bookshelves in September
which gives you time to read the first mystery novel in this series “A Negro
and an Ofay” by Danny Gardner. Once a Chicago Police Officer, Elliot Caprice
finds himself at the lowest point of his life when he’s released from jail to
discover his family home in foreclosure and the man who raised him dying. When
he takes a job as a process server, he becomes mixed up in the death of a
wealthy man and ends up running from the police and the Syndicate.
Kellye Garrett has written three books in her award
winning mystery series starring actress and apprentice private eye Dayna
Anderson. As the first book in the series, “Hollywood Homicide” introduces
Dayna whose parents are about to lose their house. When she witnesses a deadly
hit-and-run, she decides to try to find out who was driving the car in order to
collect the reward and help her parents. As she works on the case, she finds
that she enjoys trying to solve a mystery and that she is about to start her
second career.
Award winning author, Gar Anthony Hayward has
written two mystery series and several standalone novels. His last book in the
Aaron Gunner series was “Good Man Gone Bad” which came out last October. The
first book in the series was “Fear of the Dark.” After Vietnam, Gunner failed
the police academy so decided to try being a private detective. Through the
seven books in the series, Gunner learns to be a good PI but it’s never easy
working in South Central LA where money is usually a problem and so is the
constant violence.
Gary Phillips has written a bit of everything from
science fiction to mystery including his PI series featuring Ivan Monk. His
latest mystery novel came out this year and starts a new series with Matthew
Henson (“Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem”). This book is a 1920s
adventure in the style of Indiana Jones.
If you haven’t read Rachel Howzell Hall’s books,
you a great opportunity coming up in September when her latest standalone
novel “And Now She’s Gone” becomes available. If you want to get started
reading her books, she has a detective series out with “Land of Shadows” being
the first in the series. Her latest standalone came out last year (“They All
Fall Down”). Her books have been called clever, twisty, modern thrillers.
If you haven’t read a Walter Mosley book, you have
probably seen the movie “Devil in a Blue Dress” with Easy Rowlins played by
Denzel Washington. His most famous series is his Easy Rowlins series. After
five years of not adding to the Easy Rowlins series, “Blood Grove” is coming
out in February, 2021 and will be the fifteenth book in the series. His most
recent book came out in February, 2020, and was the sixth book in the Leonid
McGill series.
From 1999 to 2006, Paula L. Woods wrote a mystery
series featuring Detective Charlotte Justice, a black women in the LAPD. Eleanor
Taylor Bland’s detective series started with “Dead Time” and finished thirteen
books later with “A Dark and Deadly Deception.” Barbara Neely died in March
having left us with an award winning series of mystery novels featuring the
shrewd housekeeper turned amateur detective Blanche White. The first book in
the series is “Blanche on the Lam.”
Other Mysterious Things:
I
will have to continue this list of authors at another time since there are so
many award winning, exceptional authors that fit in this category. As a side
note, I just want to recommend some amazing books on race and the police and
also on defunding the police. In the near future, the police force may very
well change dramatically and thus how authors write about them will also change
in the mystery novels we love. It will be interesting to see what that looks
like. I have hope that it will reflect a different attitude towards African
Americans and the citizens police are supposed to protect and serve. The New York Times recently put together a
great list which included: “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, “Locking
Up Our Own” by James Forman Jr., “Biased” by Jennifer L. Eberhardt,
“Ghettoside” by Jill Leovy, and “Rise of the Warrior Cop” by Radley Balko. Also
see https://electricliterature.com/10-nonfiction-books-on-why-we-need-to-defund-the-police/ Some of the books they recommend
include:
The
Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustice in
America’s Law Enforcement by Matthew Horace and Ron
Harris
