In the next months,
I’ll be discussing the novels of Dr. Robert O. Greer. In an earlier time, Dr.
Greer might have been considered a renaissance man. In addition to writing
novels, he is a professor of dentistry, dermatology, medicine, and pathology at
the University of Colorado and owns a large cattle ranch in Wyoming. I became
acquainted with Dr. Greer, the writer, when I read his unpublished short story
“Oprah’s Song,” featuring CJ Floyd, in the anthology BLACK NOIR: MYSTERY, CRIME, AND SUSPENSE FICTION BY AFRICAN-AMERICAN
WRITERS. The short bio shows he has written several novels featuring CJ
Floyd, “a tough, often curmudgeonly, cheroot-smoking African-American bail
bondsman and occasional bounty hunter.”
I became acquainted with CJ (Calvin) Floyd In Greer’s first novel, The Devil’s Hatband. Floyd is the only black bail bondsman on Denver’s bails
bondsmen row. A Vietnam vet, he is six weeks away from his 45th birthday,
worries about being in a middle-aged crisis, and resents the way bailbond
business seems rigged against black bondsmen. He has a quick temper that he
struggles to control. His trademark dress is a “jet black riverboat gamblers
vest" and a stetson straw hat. He owns a "pampered '57 Chevrolet Bel
Air.”
Floyd gets his
first case as a detective when two well dressed black men enter his office and
offer to pay him $150 a day to find and bring back Brenda Mathison, daughter
of federal judge Lewis Mathison, and retrieve
some documents she stole from Carson Technologies, Inc., a corporation located
in Boston. She is the leader of a radical environmentalist group called The
Grand River Tribe. He has 30 days to complete the job if he wants to get paid.
The Brenda is not
wanted by the police, there is no warrant out on her, and CJ is not a private investigator.
He points out that bringing her back could be considered kidnapping. He wonders
why they want to hire a bounty hunter when the case seems to require a private
investigator or lawyer. He is suspicious but takes the job because he needs the
money.
CJ finds the Brenda in a cabin in the
mountains in Wyoming. He can’t bring her back because she is dead. The Sheriff
of the county will not allow him to search the cabin, and CJ doesn’t reveal why
he wants to search it. Back in Denver, when he reports her death to Judge
Mathison, the judge immediately offers to pay him $10,000 to find her killer.
To earn the $10,000, CJ finds himself
dealing with a manic, the second in command who became the leader, upon
Brenda’s death, of the Grand River Tribe. Unlike Brenda who only wanted to turn
the ranchers’s cows loose, Denver Deere, using information stolen from Carson
Technologies, has developed a deadly virus he plans to use on the cows and
possibly people. As if tracking and stopping Deere weren’t enough, CJ has to
deal with a gangbanger named Razor D with him he had a run in when Razor threatened
his ex-girlfriend Mavis.
Once a detective takes a case, he is expect
to complete all phases of it. In the wrap up, Greer fails to explain why CJ
didn’t find the documents and the reason for the time limit for finding the
killer. The significance of the title escaped me. There is a hat band in the
last chapter, but it doesn’t belong to any of the villains. It is a gift from
one of CJ’s friends to Mavis. But the title has a nice ring to it, and invites
you to read the novel.
Greer effectively uses the two conventions of detective
fiction. He introduces a dead body in the first chapter, which will keep the
reader reading to discover who did it. He delays until the penultimate chapter
to reveal the identity of the super villain.
The promise Greer shows in this first novel
encouraged me to read the others, and I expect to have fun doing so because I
like the bounty hunting bails bondsman and sometime detective.
