As I kiss the old year goodbye and welcome
the New Year, my mind rambles like boogie-woogie, searching for, well, I don’t
know what it’s searching for.
When I first began writing this blog in
2007, I searched the Internet for blogs and websites on crime and mystery
fiction by African American writers, and ones in which the stories, though
written by White writers, featured Black protagonist. For this post I searched
for new websites and found at least two that might interest you, dear reader: Myst Noir is devoted to “African-American
Mysteries: Mysteries written by African-Americans and/or featuring
African-American sleuth.” You can also find links to authors, books, and
mystery websites African American mystery writers on Angela Henry’s website.
The Evanston
Library in Evanston, Illinois has a list of African American mystery writers
and their novels for readers who, like me, are interested in African American
crime and mystery fiction.
I rarely mention my pet peeves in this
blog. Well, I feel the need to do so because this one has bedeviled me for
years. I hate the book reviews and columns that, at the end of each year, list
the best books of the year, the best books of the century, and the must read
list of classics. My question is this: do the people who make the best this or
that list read all the books published in a year or the century? No, they
don’t. Now, I don’t mind someone telling me what books they liked during the
year or even what books they enjoyed in the past century, but don’t tell me
that the books were the best.
By the way, why doesn’t someone list
the worst books of the year? I read a list last month about the worst movies,
why not one listing the worst books?
A reminder: drop by my old stomping
ground the SleuthSayers blog.
In February, I’ll return to Denver,
Colorado to see what new devil the bounty hunting bails bondsman, CJ (Calvin
Jefferson) Floyd, is facing.
