Category Archives: Book Review

Dear Goodreads,

Usually I address the readers of this blog. In fact, that’s the name of it, Dear Reader. But for this topic, I’m addressing you because, well, you need some help.

So this week you have proclaimed it Mystery and Thriller Week. YES! We all could use more thrills in our lives. And as a mystery-writer-in-progress (I’ll be a card carrying member of Mystery Writers Association sooner than I can fathom), I was interested in what I should be adding to my ever increasing, bottomless reading list.

And yes, I went through all your lists and even played the “name my mystery novel” game. The Body at the DMV was mine.

But something was missing. I didn’t see very many writers of color on your lists. I’m not sure if there are no authors of color at all because I didn’t click on every single name on your lists, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that maybe there’s one or two.

But I clicked on enough to say…seriously…where are we? Where are the writers of color in these lists? We write mystery books too!

No, this isn’t a let’s blame Goodreads post. Seriously, the genre overall could use some help in this department. It’s a complaint I’ve had since I started reading mysteries when I was young (think Nancy Drew and Boxcar Children Mysteries young). Others have had that same complaint.

So, I will help  because I’ve had to hunt for mystery writers of colors for awhile now. And if you need more names than the ones below, the community has got your back. I’m sure we can come up with more.

Ready for the list? Let’s go!

Walter Mosley

I can NOT start a list about mystery writers of color without Walter Mosley’s name on it. Best known book: Devil in a Blue Dress. Hands down! But the prolific scribe has several mysteries series including Easy Rawlins, Charcoal Joe, and this new one released in February of this year, Down the River Unto the Sea.

Attica Locke

Of course I had to put Houston’s own Attica Locke! Her latest book Bluebird, Bluebird was released in September. It’s a first in a series but not her first mystery book. She’s been writing mystery novels for awhile and her first book Black Water Rising was nominated for an Edgar Award. However, she is best known for writing a t.v. called Empire.

I mean, they got their plot twists from somewhere.

Lucha Corpi

Personally, she’s not getting enough recognition for her books. Period. Her Chicana detective, Gloria Damasco, is life and when I first read one of her mystery novels it was a breath of fresh air.  A Chicana detective with a “dark gift”? I was in!

I’d start with Eulogy of a Brown Angel. There’s four in her Gloria Damasco mystery series. The final, Death at Solstice, won an International Latino Book Award for best mystery.

Chester Himes

Good Lord, have mercy! Give me a minute while I clutch my pearls!

The first time I read a Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones mystery it snatched all my edges.  That means I figured out that my life without both of these characters was bleak and mundane.  I have since corrected that.

These characters are part of Himes’ Harlem Detective series. Coffin Ed and Grave Digger are police detectives in this ultra noir series.

My first book was The Real Cool Killers, and I heard the audiobook. Considering that these books published in the late 1950s through the late 1960s made them radical for the time as they dealt with issues we’re seeing today in communities of color. I am definitely coming back to this series soon.

Carolina Garcia Aguilera

And this is the author who started everything for me. Her Lupe Solano series made me think that one day I could write a mystery novel. This was the first time I saw a character that was in anyway similar to me — a smart Cuban female who dared to make the world her own.

What’s also cool about this author is that she’s a private detective so she could write her novels more accurately. How’s that for dedication?

There are seven books in the Lupe Solano series. If I had to pick a favorite I’d go with Bitter Sugar.

When my own detective, Jennie Manning, comes out, you may see some influences from this author.

Barbara Neely, Franky Y Bailey, and Alexia Gordon

I grouped these three authors together because I am not as familiar with their work. As I was doing research for this post, I came across their books and I am adding them to my to reading list, ironically on Goodreads. Just wanted to mention them in this listing.

Karen Grisby Bates

Of course this name should be familiar. She’s a correspondent for NPR. I hear her often on the podcast CodeSwitch. But when I was doing the research for this post, I realized that I knew who she was in another capacity.

She is the author of the Alex Powell mysteries. In particular of Plain Brown Wrapper. I read this novel when I was an intern in Detroit. I was jonesing for something to read that summer and I picked up this at Borders (y’all remember Borders?).

Turns out that store took a large chunk of my money that summer. East Houston didn’t have a bookstore at the time. Actually, it still really doesn’t. And so when I saw this book and that the investigator is BLACK? AND FEMALE? Yes, I picked it up. I think about this book often and wondered why it didn’t get the attention it deserved.

Chris Abani

Yes, the Chris Abani. Chris Abani wrote a mystery novel. And OF COURSE The Secret History of Las Vegas won an Edgar Award.

Of course.

Yes, that’s my picture to the left and NO, I haven’t read it yet. So I can’t give a recommendation but, if he did with mysteries what he does with fiction or poetry, then this will be a great read…once I get to it on my list.

It’s a crazy list, guys.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

El Maestro Gabo wrote may things in his life but one of my favorite is actually a mystery novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold. It’s not a who-done-it but a how-done-it.  It’s one of my favorites of his novellas. Worth picking up. It’s a quick read too.

Rudolfo Anaya

Another Chicano writer! Anaya is known for Bless Mi Ultima, which isn’t a mystery novel. That’s important to know because after what would be his best know and seminal work, Anaya turned his pen to writing mysteries and let me tell you I’m so glad he did.

There are four novels in his Sonny Becca series. The one I read and loved the most was Rio Grande Fall. Why? I fell in love with the opening paragraph:

“Sonny felt the soft pressure of the eagle feather across his chest. The soft voice from the healer was calling him back from his vision. He smelled the sweet aroma of the burning copal in the room, and he struggled to rise out of the dark shadows where he had be running with a family of coyotes.”

I mean…come on! I was here for it after that paragraph. This was your lead investigator in a mystery novel. Done and done. I wanted more after that.

Here here you go, Goodreads! A full dozen mystery writers of color. There are more but I wanted to give a good round number.  There are more out there!

I love Goodreads and I don’t dare make a book purchase without consulting it first. And although there aren’t many writers of color in the genre, we exist and our books are every bit as thrilling.

Yes, you did happen to notice that I used the word we. One day I’ll join my fellow rebel rousers on the list. In fact, I’ll have a project coming out soon where I’ll be anthologized with other writer’s of color playing with the noir genre. I hope by the time my novel does come out and that my detective Jennie Manning makes her debut, that we’re welcomed during that year’s Mystery and Thriller week.

Happy reading,

-Icess

Dear Reader,

It’s National Poetry Month! This is an awesome month when we can read poetry, appreciate it, and learn from it.

Well, actually, every month is poetry month in my world.

So, I was actually reading two collection before poetry month and just finished one them in time for the celebrations. Danez Smith’s collection, “Don’t Call Us Dead” is unapologetically existing on bookshelves challenging what poetry is, what being black in America is and has become, and what being a gay, black man means — both the glory and the tragedy.

Frankly, when I was done reading this collection, I felt like I was sucker-punched into creating art. But I digress… here’s the summary thanks to the fine folks at Amazon.

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don’t Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality—the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood—and a diagnosis of HIV positive. “Some of us are killed / in pieces,” Smith writes, “some of us all at once.” Don’t Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America—“Dear White America”—where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.

The metaphor of death — sometimes literal–is weaved all through this collection. There is  death in places that are sweet and nostalgic. For example, in the poem summer, somewhere some of the lines beat like an exposed nerve.

“history is what it is. it know what it did./bad dog/ bad blood. bad day to be a boy/color of a July well spent. but here, not earth, /not heaven, we can’t recall our white shirts turned ruby gowns.”

The poem continues into the collection’s title.

“if snow fell, it’d fall black. please, don’t call/us dead, call us alive someplace better.”

The images here between heaven and death are visceral–the white of snow turning black, the darkness of a sort of purity or the pieces of black that fall from the perviously fallen. The ruby of gowns, stained from white. Black and red and white all interlocked into a vicious circle. From white comes red and the falling of black, previous historical sins coming to reclaim the earth, even if for a moment. But the death in this case means “alive someplace better.” So it is really death or a reclaiming?

These lines have much to unpack. Smith does this often and it’s easy to read over the mastery of what is on the page.  This is most true when Smith writes about being gay and black, a taboo. Smith plays with the idea of purity not only visually but with allusion as well.

In 1 in 2, Smith starts the poem with a CDC report about HIV and the statistics for black men. The news of the disease was as devastating as the statistic.

“you went in for /a routine test and they told you what you were made of:/-honey spoiled into mead/-lemon mold/-broken proofs/-traffic tickets/-unindentified shard/-a shy, red moon/-a book of antonyms/-the book of job/-a lost child unaware of its name/you knew it would come to this, but then it actually came.”

The order of the list here is telling; it starts with something sweet and ordinarily pure like honey and it’s turned counterpart – mead. Moldy lemon is next, with the item turning from bright, optimistic yellow to a dark moldy, shriveled thing. The list continues through various “sins” like traffic tickets and the outcomes of battles like “unidentified shard”. The reader finally lands on the allusion, the Book of Job, the most poetic book in the Bible, a work of purity in some circles. The theme of Job is divine justice and asks why do the righteous of  humanity suffer. And so again he plays with purity — everything was great until it wasn’t.  I was fine and okay and without fault until the news came, and now I am to suffer.

Smith, in just these lines asks “why” but alas it’s been answered with statistic, “1 in 2 “black men who have sex with men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime.”

And again, is this a death or a reclaiming?

There was so much in this book that I eventually stopped highlighting passages and defaulted highlighting titles to entire poems. Seriously guys, this collection is a much welcomed kick in the head for any poet and reader. This is one collection I will be returning to if only to unlock further mysteries.

My favorite poem is “dream where every black person is standing by the ocean”. While it’s the final one in this heavy collection, Smith manages to uplift and give hope. But I won’t steal Smith’s thunder. You can read it here. 

Read on,

-Icess