Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Taxis’ Category

Ed Lacy–Room to Swing (1957)

Posted in Ed Lacy, Leonard (Len) S Zinberg, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Racism, South, Taxis, Technology on July 27, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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…)

Read Full Post »

Lee Durkee–“Ride or Die” (Harper’s, April 2020)

Posted in Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, Beer, Daughter of Swords, Drinking, Excerpt, Harper's, Lee Durkee, Mountain Man, NPR/PRI/PBS, Prison, Taxis, Tiny Desk Concert on May 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DAUGHTER OF SWORDS-Tiny Desk Concert #971 (April 29, 2020).

Alexandra Sauser-Monnig is part of Mountain Man (who did a Tiny Desk Concert some time ago).  Daughter of Swords is her solo project.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is just as quiet and delicate as Mountain Man but with a little more instrumentation.

Though she’s joined by a full band here, Daughter of Swords was originally envisioned as a solo project for Alexandra Sauser-Monnig. … With a few hushed folk songs, the music was so eerily still, you could have heard a phone vibrate.

This has to be one of the quietest four-piece bands ever on Tiny Desk.

As “Long Leaf Pine” begins, all you hear is a low rumble–the floor tom from Joe Westerlund.  Then Alexandra Sauser-Monnig begins singing quietly.  Maia Friedman supplies soft backing vocals from time to time.  Sauser-Monnig sings high and quiet and amazingly hits and even higher note before the end.

I like the sound of “Shining Woman” more. I think Alex Bingham’s bass stands out a bit more.  Or maybe it’s because Friedman plays an electric guitar accompaniment.  This song starts with a smattering of interesting percussion from Westerlund and while it is in no way loud, it moves faster than the previous song.

When Mountain Man was here, they talked about breakfast food.  Alexandra reprises that by asking what people had for breakfast.  Answers: a banana, a soft-boiled egg.  Alexandra had a green smoothie and goes on about the large piece of toast she had.  She doesn’t normally eat bread and this felt crazy to her [that should tell you all you need to know about Sauser-Monnig].  Bassist Alex Bingham says, “wild day so far.”

For the final song, “Prairie Winter Wasteland” Friedman plays the guitar to start this song–quietly ringing electric guitar.  There’s an interesting bass line from Bingham on this song and Westerlnd is using a small whisk brush on the cymbals.

[READ: April 20, 2020] “Ride or Die”

This is an excerpt from the novel The Last Taxi Driver.

Set in Mississippi, this excerpt follows a cab driver with one fare, a man just released from prison.

He says they never tell him what they were in for, only that they just got out.

This man–white dude, mid-thirties, a few missing teeth, a few prison tats–is in a fantastic mood.  He’s carrying a twelve-pack of Bud Light and asks to go to the Bethune Woods Project.

The driver says he didn’t even know these projects existed before he started driving a cab.  Most of the other cab companies shun the projects.  He knows that Uber is coming to town “I’ve never used an Uber and don’t understand how that works”), and he assumed they will shun the projects too. (more…)

Read Full Post »