I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: July 25, 2023] Room to Swing

I receive books that are part of a series, but often I get one book and never see any other books in the series.  So this book is part of the Library of Congress Crime Classics series–reprints with wicked covers.

I’d never heard of this book even though it won the 1958 Edgar award for best novel.

Much of the reason this book is reprinted in this format is because the main character, Toussaint Moore is a Black private investigator.  Black sleuths were not common at the time, although they were not unheard of.  Indeed, white author Octavus Roy Cohen had created Florian Slappey, a caricature of a Black detective for the Saturday Evening Post.  By the 1950s, there were several Black detectives, but not many Black private detectives.

Ed Lacy (pseudonym of Leonard (Len) S Zinberg) was a white author who married a Black woman and lived in Harlem.  He created Toussaint Moore as an opportunity to capture the struggles of a Black man in the 1950s.

But the story is not a polemic about race relations.  Indeed, the mystery is pretty interesting and fun to follow.  And Touie is a charming and resourceful detective.

As the story opens, Touie is heading to Ohio from his home in New York City.  Southern Ohio is not the South (although Kentucky is only 20 miles away), but when Touie walks into a diner, they tell him he can’t eat there.  He only wanted to see a phone book and the local policeman quickly arrives to make sure that’s all he’s getting.  However, the mailman is Black and he quickly tells him what it’s safe for Touie to do.  He also has a room that Touie can stay in for a couple of days.

So why is he here?  He is here looking for clues about a murder.  However, he is also the prime suspect in the murder, so it’s possible he’s also laying low.  Although a Black man in a beautiful Jaguar (a crazy expensive import) does not lay low in Southern Ohio.

The man who was killed (in NYC) was from this small town.  And the story is that he was a heap of trouble when he was here, so maybe someone was tailing him to give him trouble in the City.

The story then backs up a few days and we learn how Touie was involved.  A TV producer (Kay Robbens) wants to do a new show called You–Detective!  She has called on Touie to assist with the show.  She has called him specifically because he is small time (she wants absolute secrecy) and because he is Black. He is skeptical but when she says he’ll make $50 a day (about $25,000 in todays wages), he is on board.

The show is clearly a forerunner to a lot of contemporary shows

we dig up little-known crimes–gory or sexy ones–show the actual scenes of the crime, interview some of the people involved, the police, flash some of the “wanted” flyers on the TV screen. … [The narrator] ends the show by rehashing the clues and … points a thick finger at the audience as he orders his staff to get the fugitive. … If a person sends in information that leads to a an arrest [he gets a reward].

Touie is supposed to keep an eye on the an from Ohio–just to make sure he doesn’t get tipped off about the show knowing him.  Touie is good at this, although he does run into him by mistake once.

Touie has a girlfriend who wants him to quit the detective life and get a job at the Post Office.  They are spending sometime together, when he gets a tip that the guy he is tailing is in trouble.  When he arrives at the guy’s apartment, he finds him recently killed.  And a cop follows him into the room about five minutes later.  He has been set up.  But by who?

The story is well plotted with some cool new (at the time) technology.  The race relations in New York City are interesting to see.  And, it turns out that Kay and her husband are both women.  So there’s interesting social commentary all over the book.

The edition includes lots of footnotes explaining some of the slang and realities for Black people at the time.  And the ending sets up for a follow up book (not q sequel, because this case is solved).

Lacy wrote one more Touie Moore book, but it wasn’t until seven years later.