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.

Don’t Talk To Strangers

In the detective novel, we watch the investigator practice the art of detection. When there is nothing to detect, it is not a detective novel. In Where Evil Sleeps, the third novel in Wesley’s Tamara Hayle series, our heroine’s problem is not finding a killer but how to avoid being accused of murder and, most importantly, escaping two men who think she has their money. The novel is, therefore, a thriller.

 As I was reading the novel, I wanted to yell at Tamara, “girl, didn’t your grandma tell you don’t talk to strangers when she told you the devil would get his due?” On vacation in Kingston, Jamaica, she walks straight into trouble with her eyes wide open when she reluctantly accepts the invitation of young woman staying in the same hotel. Twenty-three-year-old Lilah Love persuades her to go to the Stamp and Go Club with her, her husband Sammy Lee Love, and his friend Delaware Brown.

Inside the club, Tamara immediately senses trouble brewing when she notices three teenage thugs profiling in their hoodies and baggy pants and three men standing at the bar, two black and one white. Lacey, one of the black men, is a friend of Delaware Brown, whom he will later involve in a scheme to steal a black bag full of money. Trouble starts when the heavy drinking Sammy Lee accuses Delaware and Lilah of having an affair. He also accuses Delaware of double-crossing him. Suddenly, the lights go out and shooting starts. Tamara dives under the table, wishing that she had listened to her grandma’s voice.

When the lights come back on, blood is dripping on the floor and the hem of her dress. She crawls from under the table and discovers that Sammy Lee is dead, stabbed through the heart. Lilah and Delaware are missing. So is her Kenya bag with her money, passport and identification in it. She realizes she is a suspect in Sammy Lee’s death. She’ll have to dodge the Kingston police while trying to figure how she is going to get back home to Newark. But first, she has to get out of the club and back to her hotel room.

Coincidentally, Basil Dupre, whom we met in When Death Comes Stealing, is in Jamaica to bury his mother. In Newark he was the bad boy type whom Tamara almost slept with. He rescues her from the club and takes her back to her hotel. His cousin who works at the hotel sneaks Tamara back into her room.

Soon after Tamara returns to her room, Lilah bangs on the door. She wants Tamara to come back with her to Delaware’s place to get what she claims is her money. Tamara, again against her better judgment, accompanies Lilah. In her search of the place, Tamara finds Delaware dead in the bathroom. She looks for Lilah and discovers she has escaped through an open window. Lilah’s disappearance means Tamara is the only person who can connect the two dead men.

Returning to her hotel room, Tamara follows two guys she suspects are cops to Lilah’s room. She can’t get inside, but she sees Lilah’s red panties and a dress lying on the floor and assumes she is dead. Back in her room, she receives a phone call from a man asking where is his money. She finally realizes she needs help immediately, and calls Basil. He takes her to a house in the mountains that belongs to his friend Noel. Although she is still pissed at him for lying to her about himself, she accepts his offer to help.

The house is where our heroine will confront the real evil who is also searching for the bag of money.

The long passages of description about her relationship with Basil slow the pace of Where Evil Sleeps. Upon first reading, I thought the scenes were padding, but after further consideration, I realized Basil’s appearance is a plot device used to give the sense of time passing. Wilson does not subordinate plot to an exploration of Basil's character. The slow pace builds suspense and forces us to wait for the climax when Tamara will face the evil.

I like Where Evil Sleeps for the action that doesn’t involve any detecting. We get to watch Tamara exhibit some physical skills in this action thriller.

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.

The Prognosticator

Spoon, Dr. Robert Greer's twelfth novel, which is not a part of his CJ Floyd series, is a coming of age story using a western-type plot set in the 20th century. Instead of cattlemen against homesteaders, it’s ranchers versus an energy corporation. The Acota Coroporation wants the coal and natural gas beneath the ranches, especially the rich coal deposits beneath the Willow Creek Ranch. 

The story opens in the autumn of 1991 in Hardin, Big Horn County, Montana. TJ Darley, the 19-year-old narrator, picks up a hitchhiker “wearing a $250 5X Resistol cowboy hat and no shoes.” The hitchhiker, whose name is Arcus Witherspoon, prefers to be called Spoon. He is “part-black, part-Indian cowboy searching for his roots.” Although Spoon has just been fired from a ranch, TJ offers him a job working on the Darley’s Willow Creek Ranch, but he must convince his skeptical father to hire him. To convince Bill Darley that he can do a good days work, Spoon negotiates a deal. He says he can cut a 180-acre field of alfalfa, bale the alfalfa, pick up the bales and stack them “neat as a pin” in 24 hours. Bill Darley says it’s impossible. Twenty-four hours later Spoon has the job.

It’s not long before Spoon senses a problem the Darleys are having, which, to TJ, proves he is clairvoyant. “Easy” Ed Koffman, representative of the Acota Energy Corporation, visits and again tries to get the Darleys to sell. Again they refuse, and he warns them he will get what he wants. Spoon sees Koffman leaving and, sizing up the man, warns the Darleys that trouble is coming. Bill Darley doesn't think Spoon is a prognosticator, but his wife Marva and TJ do after Acota Energy Corporation buys the neighboring ranches, leaving the Darleys to fight Acota alone.

While helping the Darleys fight off Ed Koffman and his muscle Matt Rodue, whom he sees as a physical threat, Spoon continues to search for his roots. His grandfather was one of the Buffalo soldiers who settled somewhere in the west and married an Indian woman. However, he isn’t sure to which tribe his grandmother belonged. 

Spoon is a feel good story showing that individuals can fight city hall, or, specifically, a big, powerful corporation. At first, like Bill Darley, I was skeptical about Spoon because his prognostications were so obvious. He had lost his land in Ohio and deduced from his keen observation of people that Acota Energy Corporation was trouble. Then I realized I was seeing him through the 19-year-old eyes of TJ, who idealizes him. For TJ, Spoon had “a special gift he called charm. A gift that he used to help me and my family rescue our lives and way of life before he moved on.” 

Although I enjoyed the novel, it didn’t engage me as Greer’s other novels did. I felt it is the type of novel one reads to relax and not have to think. Maybe Greer wrote the novel to get away for a while from CJ Floyd. Spoon is certainly easier on the nerves.

The Last Man Standing

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.” 

     William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

On November 22, 1963, an assassin shot and killed President John F. Kennedy. The assassination generated several conspiracies theories: it was the CIA; it was Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, it was Cuban President Fidel Castro; it was the KGB; and it was the Mafia. In his sixth CJ Floyd novel, THE MONGOOSE DECEPTION, Robert Greer suggests it might have been the Mafia and “The High Cabal” of 11 men who "were the power behind government and corporations and organized crime."  

Greer’s bail bondsman/antique dealer, CJ Floyd, gets involved in the conspiracy theory that the Mafia assassinated President John F. Kennedy when some 30 years after the Eisenhower Tunnel was completed in the 1970s a frozen arm is found behind the tunnel wall following an earthquake. Based on the tattoo on the arm, Cornelius McPherson, the worker who found the arm, identified it as belonging to a fellow worker named Antoine Ducane who disappeared in 1972. Cornelius is later killed when he attempts to locate Antoine’s next of kin. The gruesome find and the McPherson killing set in motion a series of events that everyone involved thinks might lead to the real JFK assassin. 

CJ tries to protect his long time friend, 86-year-old, former Denver mob boss Mario Satoni, the last Mafioso who might have knowledge of the assassination. The three mob bosses who allegedly planned the operation are dead. Once evidence connects Antoine Ducane to the assassination, an FBI agent goes after Mario Satoni. Mario’s nephew Rollie Ornasetti, who supervised a failed assassination attempt in Chicago in 1963, tries to frame Mario. Carmine Cassias, the young boss of the Louisiana crime family, wants Satoni and Rollie dead for fear they will reveal the Mafia’s role in the assassination.

As he searches for the hitman Rollie sends to kill Satoni, CJ finds himself working with Satoni’s enforcer Pinkie Niedermyer and Gus Cavalaris, the Denver Homicide detective investigating the murders of Ducane and McPherson. Eighty-year-old Willette Ducane travels to Denver from Louisiana and hires CJ to find out what happened to her son Antoine.

The unknown villains manipulating events behind the scene don’t want the truth about the assassination revealed either. CJ, however, believes he might change history: "…I think we might have stumbled across something that could put a new twist on history." He thinks he “can shed just a little bit of truth on that killing…”

The Mongoose Deception is a good “what if” novel. What if it was the Mafia and some leaders in industry and government who wanted President John F. Kennedy dead? The novel is an entertaining fantasy with unknown villains manipulating the known villains. Greer does a good job of keeping the plot tight, not going off on a tangent exploring other theories.

If you are a member of a “who killed JFK” conspiracy club you will enjoy The Mongoose Deception more than the previous five novels.

The Blues is Dangerous

In Robert O. Greer’s first novel, THE DEVIL’S HATBAND, in his CJ Floyd series, the bounty hunting bail bondsman tangled with some maniacal environmentalists bent on destroying the cattle industry. In the second novel, THE DEVIL’S RED NICKEL, not only does Floyd face some bad guys hell bent on killing him, his beautiful, sexy client, who "looked every bit the part of an Ebony fashion-fair model..." at times gives him as much trouble as the bad guys. Her sexy beauty belies her real personality. For CJ she "was a black woman with money who was turning out be volatile, manipulative, and unpredictable."

  

At the Juneteenth Steering Committee meeting, Vernon Lowe, the part time chief morgue attendant at Denver General Hospital and full time undertaker in Five Points, Denver’s Black community, hands CJ one of CJ’s business cards that he found in the pockets of a man recently brought into the morgue. CJ has no idea who the man is or why he had his card.

Shortly after the meeting breaks up, the sexy beauty, Clothilde Polk, the dead man’s daughter approaches CJ. The dead man was LeRoy Polk. She hires CJ to find his killer and gives him the names of five people she believes might be responsible. The first is LeRoy’s ex-wife Mabel Pitts, who was like a mother to CJ, and is a surprising suspect. The second, also a surprise, is her half brother Tyrone, Mabel’s and LeRoy’s son. The third suspect is a gangster named Lawrence Hampoli now living in Pueblo, Colorado with whom LeRoy was in business. Juney-boy Stokes, a transsexual from whom LeRoy stole songs, is the fourth. LeRoy stole money from the fifth suspect, Roland Jefferson who invested in his Stax of Wax Recording Company.

Given Clothilde’s nasty attitude, CJ doesn’t like working for her but he needs the money because he’s broke. The last man he bailed out skipped town, leaving him with no money to pay bills. Before the job is over, CJ and Clothilde are almost killed as they arrive at Mae’s Louisiana Kitchen just as a bomb goes off wrecking the place. Later, he and his cowboy sidekick, Billy DeLong, will be run off the road near Pueblo, Colorado and shot at in Chicago.

LeRoy Polk was a DJ known as Daddy Doo-Wop Polk and built the music business Stax of Wax in the 1950s. He worked and fronted for the mob in Chicago and amassed a fortune that he used to start his own record label. He may have made some master tapes that the mob didn't know about. The tapes are the key to who killed him and Mabel.

The red nickels of the title were coins with a red strip that owners who rented the jukeboxes were forced to use. They gave customers change in red nickels, and the customers used them to play songs on the jukeboxes. The gangster who operated the jukebox business collected the money.

I don't usually test my detecting ability against that of the sleuth. I prefer to watch him or her as s/he collects and assembles the clues. However, in The Devil’s Red Nickel, I found myself trying to identify the killer before CJ. The killer’s elusive identity, held back until the penultimate chapter, is a real surprise.

What I really liked about the novel is the brief history of Juneteenth and the background setting of the rhythm and blues industry during the 1950s. It brought make memories of my youth growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee and listening late at night to the DJs on the black radio station in Memphis.

If you enjoyed The Devil’s Hatband, you’ll enjoy The Devil’s Red Nickel even more, especially if you are a rhythm and blues fan.

I hope all of you had a scary Halloween and are looking forward to a Happy Thanksgiving.