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. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 