An Ex-acquaintance Reappears Bringing Danger

If you enjoy a novelist’s series, sadness creeps over you when you know you are reading the last novel in the series. Of Blood and Sorrow is the eighth and last novel in Valerie Wilson Wesley’s Tamara Hayle series. She has written several children and romance novels, but as far as I can determine, she hasn’t written anymore Tamara Hayle novels.

Lilah Love, the young woman Tamara met in Jamaica while on vacation several years ago, enters her life again. She almost got Tamara killed when Tamara was vacationing in Jamaica. An older Lilah, just like in Jamaica, brings trouble trailing behind her. She demands that Tamara bring her baby to her. She threatens to harm her son Jamal if Tamara doesn’t get Baby Dal from Lilah’s sister Thelma Lee. She gave the baby to Thelma Lee when she was in trouble and now Thelma Lee refuses to give it back. Tamara wants nothing to do with Lilah because “Death had clung to Lilah Love like fleas to an alley car down in Jamaica, and I didn’t want to bring those bad vibes into my life.” After Lilah leaves, she throws the address of the sister in the wastebasket.

To complicate matters further, Treyman Barnes, an alleged reformed gangster, hires Tamara to find Baby Dal and bring her to him. Troy, his son, is the baby’s father. Lilah married him before he was sent to Iraq and divorced him soon shortly afterwards. Tamara takes the job and tells Treyman that Lilah has also asked her to get the baby back. She doesn’t tell him that Lilah’s sister has the baby. She thinks it’ll be the easiest fee she ever earned. The ensuing event will prove her wrong.

Later, Thelma Lee calls Tamar, explains she knows Lilah is doing business with her but doesn’t explain how she knows. She’s frightened because some people, she says, have been following her. Tamara can come get the baby because Thelma Lee is tired of the drama around Baby Dal. She and the baby are living with their Aunt Edna Sweets. 

Tamara runs into a problem when she visits the home. Thelma Lee and the baby aren’t there, and the aunt’s boyfriend, Jimson Weed Carter, a Vietnam veteran, displays a hostile attitude toward Tamara. 

Her second problem when she returns home is the police are looking for Jamal. Lilah Love was killed, and they found an item in her car that belonged to him. If the killer suspects he saw what happened, he or she might be looking for Jamal. From a friend in the Belvington Heights Police Department, where Tamara used to work, she learns Lilah died from a blow with a fist to her throat that crushed her larynx.

Tamara suspects Lilah’s boyfriend Turk might be the killer until he is found in a motel room with his throat cut. She also suspects Treyman until he also is found with his throat cut. For Tamara, the only suspects left are Troy Barnes, a veteran of the Iraq war suffering from PTSD, and his mother Nellie Barnes, who suffers from one of those mysterious literary diseases.

Of the eight novels, I liked Of Blood and Sorrow the best. It has a real surprise twist for which Wesley deftly prepares the reader.

This is my last post. These days I struggle to find words to describe my impressions of the novels I read. While my reading vocabulary is intact, my writing vocabulary seems to have diminished. The words don’t come as easily as they did when I was younger. I’m sure, dear readers, you are aware that my reviews in the past year have been bland. I simply no longer have the energy to do the reading, evaluation, and writing. 

Another reason for giving up the blog is that, after reading Google’s message on Sunday, 20, 2016, about cookies and the European Union, I didn’t feel up to taxing my brain with yet another problem of learning how the Internet works. Maintaining the blog has gotten too technical and my aging brain is resisting the effort to keep up.

It’s been fun. Thanks for reading my blog.

Moving On Up Is dangerous

In Easier To Kill, the fifth novel in Wesley’s Tamara Hayle series, a black woman survives rape by her foster father and teenage prostitution to become a famous radio host of her own show. But she can’t completely escape her past.

Mandy Magic, the famous host of a nighttime radio talk show, hires Tamara to find out who sent her a note with the words “Movin’ On Up” written on it. She received the note shortly after her cousin Tyrone Mason was stabbed to death in a city park frequented by gay men. The words are the title to the theme song of the 1970s TV show “The Jeffersons.”

A few days later, Mandy’s office manager and best friend since grammar school Pauline Reese is strangled to death. We are not told what is in the second not Mandy receives after Pauline’s death. The next victim is Kenton Daniels, III whom Mandy hired as a consultant. He, like Tyrone, is stabbed to death. Although the two men were stabbed and Pauline was strangled, Tamara believes the three murders are connected and that the connection lies in Mandy Magic’s past. Mandy doesn’t receive a note after Kenton’s death, suggesting maybe the killer is getting closer to her. She doesn’t want Tamara to investigate or talk to the police about the murders. She insists that Tamara confine her investigation to finding out who sent the notes.

Thinking about the murders and the words “Movin’ On Up,” Tamara believes the killer, in killing people close to Mandy, is moving on up to finally go after her. Thus, she fears 18-year-old Taniqua, Mandy’s adopted daughter, might be next while at the same time she considers her a possible suspect (telling you why would be a spoiler).

Tamara becomes frustrated with the case because she feels Mandy is keeping a secret from her. Mandy refuses to talk about her past and insists that Tamara not involve the police. Tamara’s frustration boils over, and when she confronts her uncooperative client and insists she tell her the truth, Mandy fires her. As Tamara leaves, she sees a man enter the house and follows him in expecting the worse. The confrontation between the man and Mandy reveals her secret. After learning the truth Tamara suffers a bout of deep depression. She admired Mandy and considered her a survivor because she moved on up from working as a teen prostitute to become the famous host of her own radio show.

EAISER TO KILL is short, only 193 pages, but the crisp, conversational prose maintains the easy flowing pace and the suspense from start to finish. The tension builds slowly and is not relieved until the very last page when the identity of the killer is revealed. The story of a woman surviving her soul draining past and becoming famous is both uplifting and depressing (though I’m not sure Wesley meant it to be uplifting or depressing). You’ll have to read it to find out why, after the revelation of Mandy’s secret, Tamara goes into deep depression.

The Bean Dip Murder Case

The major theme of crime novels, crime doesn’t pay, often serves as a foundation for examining social problems. The motifs involving such problems are what make the novels enjoyable. In her first Tamara Hayle novel, When Evil Comes Stealing, Valerie Wilson Wesley dealt with the relationship between fathers and sons. The Devil Gonna Get Him, the second novel in the series, is about the relationship between mothers and daughters.

  

Lincoln E. Storey, who rose from the mean streets of Newark to become one of the first black investment bankers on Wall Street, hires PI Tamara Hayle to follow a lady’s man named Brandon Pike and find out what game he’s playing. The thirty-year-old Pike is dating Lincoln’s 23-year-old stepdaughter Alexa. Storey suspects Pike is after his money.

Tamara once dated Pike after her divorce from DeWayne Curtis, but she doesn’t remember what he looks like. Storey suggests she attend a fundraiser he’s having for deputy District Attorney Stella Pharr who is running for a seat in the New Jersey state assembly. The affair will be held in the restaurant that Jackson Tate, an old friend of Tamara’s deceased father, manages.

Shortly after everyone sits down to eat, Lincoln E. Storey drops dead. At Pharr’s request, the authorities test the bean dip and discover that it contained peanut butter. The autopsy showed he died from an anaphylactic shock. Tasha Green, who prepared the bean dip, becomes the prime suspect. A month earlier at another dinner she suggested the perfect way to kill Storey would be to put some peanuts in his food.

What will Tamara do now that her client is dead? In need of money, she wonders if she can still collect the $1,000 fee. Her friend Wyvetta Green, Tasha’s older sister, comes to her rescue. She hires Tamara to find the real killer because she doesn’t believe Tasha did it. She can’t pay Tamara’s usual fee but she will pay what she can for a week of Tamara’s time. Tamara doesn’t like working for a friend, especially one who doesn’t have the money to pay her going rate. She needs the money, so she takes the case.

Each of the other five people who were present at the earlier gathering had a motive for killing Lincoln: his wife Daphne, though she claimed they were reconciled; his stepdaughter Alexa who just plain hated him, Pike who wants his money, Jackson Tate, whose restaurant Lincoln now owns, and Stella Pharr who might have had a romantic interest in him.

In Devil’s Gonna Get Him, we learn more about Tamara’s childhood. During the investigation, her observation of the volatile relationship between Daphne and Alexa triggers the dark memories of her abusive relationship with her own mother. Her mother was cruel and beat her in an attempt to knock all the black off. The normal and caring relationship between Wyvetta and Tasha is like that of mother and daughter since Wyvetta practically raised Tasha after their mother died, but this doesn’t change Tamara’s feelings toward her dead mother. She isn’t sure she can ever forgive her mother. The exploration into Tamara’s background adds complexity to her personality that makes her truly believable and increases the verisimilitude of the story.

The body count in Devil’s Gonna Get Him is down to only two, which makes for a tighter plot. The tighter plot makes it more difficult to identify the killer before the detective does. I haven’t named the second murder victim because it would spoil one of the surprises. This second novel in the series is as powerful and exciting as the first. I’m anxious to begin reading Where Evil Sleeps, the third novel in the series.

Who Is Killing His Sons

Death Comes Stealing is the first novel in Valerie Wilson Wesley’s Tamara Hayle private detective series. Tamara is the single mother of a 14-year old son and an ex-policewoman who quit the force and opened her own private investigation business, the Hayle Investigative Services, Inc.

  

Tamara’s ex-husband, Dewayne Curtis, hires her to find out who might have killed his son Terrence. He suspects a conspiracy against him because his oldest son, DeWayne Junior, who lived in Virginia, was killed in a robbery on the same date, October 4, a year earlier. This was the first time she knew he had a son older than Terrence. He has been married five times and has sons by four of his legitimate wives and one, DeWayne Junior, by his common-law-wife. Tamara is the mother of his youngest son Jamal. His current wife is 22-year-old Carlotta who has no children but is a problem for Tamara and DeWayne.

Tamara is on talking terms with DeWayne but doesn’t trust him and isn’t too happy about his asking her to get involved in his mess. She was married to him for five years and never discovered how he earned his money. There was always something shady about him. Since the PI business hasn’t been too good lately, she needs the money, so she takes the case. Soon after taking the case, she finds herself investigating the death of two of his other sons while trying to protect Jamal.

After a thorough inspection of Terrence’s room in the boarding house where he lived, Tamara doesn’t accept drug overdose as the cause of his death. She becomes even more skeptical when DeWayne’s third son Gerard is found dead five days later in the bathtub in his paternal grandmother’s house. His death is ruled a drowning accident. Tamara’s friends Annie and Jake advise her to send DeWayne a bill and drop the case.

She considers doing so when, five days later, the fourth son, Hakim, is killed. His death is clearly murder since someone in a car shot him. Jamal was with him and witnessed the shooting but couldn’t identify the person in the car. Tamara, realizing Jamal is next and that she has five days to find the killer, travels to Salem, Virginia where DeWayne grew up to find the answers to why and who is killing his sons. In Salem, she discovers a lot about DeWayne that he never told her.

About a third of the way through the novel, I identified the killer. My guess wasn’t based on the clues but on the least likely suspect. Although I was right, I don’t like identifying the killer before the detective does. I don’t enjoy pitting my investigative skills against those of the detective. I prefer to watch the detective as she gathers and interprets the clues. I still however enjoyed the novel because I wanted to see what clues Tamara uncovered and how she would interpret them.

When Death Comes Stealing is the type of first novel that invites the reader to long for the other books in the series. Wesley’s conversational prose style makes the characters come alive. I felt Tamara Hayle was sitting across from me and telling me about her experience as a private detective. I didn’t learn as much about her background as I would have liked. Her brother Johnny committed suicide when she was in her teens, which continues to bother her. I look forward to discovering more of her backstory and watching her tangle with some bad people in the other novels in the series.

A bibliography of Wesley’s novels are on the Goodreads website. For more about her, you should visit the “About the Author” website here. And don’t forget to visit the font of all knowledge on the Internet, Wikipedia.

Shout out to Gary Phillips for his very informative article “The Unacknowledged: Black Crime Fiction, the Roaring ‘20s to the 1930s” in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

It’s Getting Harder

After I finished reading Robert Greer’s last novel, Spoon, I decided to step away from crime fiction and rest my aging brain. I have failed in the past few months to meet my self-imposed deadline for posting articles to my blog because, as I get older, it takes me longer to finish a book and then write my critical review. I reread some of my reviews for the past few months and discovered they are very bland.

I seemed to have more senior moments as I get older. I struggle these days to find the right words to express my thoughts. They don’t come as easily as they did when I was younger. They are, it seems, hiding in my brain, and when I search for them, they slip away, purposefully eluding me, hiding in a section that has nothing to do with language. This suggests that my writing, and possibly my reading, vocabulary has decreased, and continuous to do so. I’m still trying to find my voice. I want to abandon my academic voice and cultivate a conversational voice.

I cannot stop writing. Writing for me is an addiction.

In my reading of crime fiction by African American writers, I try to alternate between female and male. That is why Valerie Wilson Wesley is my next project beginning in May. After her, I plan to read the novels of Gary Phillips. I have only one of his novels in my library. So, I’ll be buying some of his other novels while reading Wesley.

According to the winter 2016 edition of Mystery Scene Magazine, the Mystery Writers of America chose Walter Moseley as the 2016 Grand Master. Good for him. I hope someday to finish reading his huge body of work.