1958 Edgar Award
Winner. First appearance of Toussaint Moore, a black private investigator from
New York, framed in his own city for a white man's murder. Moore ends up in a
small Ohio town, close to the Kentucky border, trying to prove his own
innocence and dealing the attitudes of the time. Fascinating novel, written by
Lacy (Len Zinberg), a politically active author from the '30s whose knowledge
of the culture is derived from his marriage to an African-American woman.
Toussaint "Touie" Moore is considered the first credible black
detective.
The
author was obviously ahead of his time in his willingness to question societal
norms in regard to racism and homosexuality, possibly the adoption of his
pseudonym was an effort to protect himself from the fall-out of McCarthyism in
the 50’s, who knows?
Moore
a part-time investigator cum security guard lands on his feet when hired to
keep tabs on Robert Thomas, a small-town hood from Ohio now esconsed in New
York. At $50 a day plus expenses, he’s making plans for his own detective
agency. Cue disaster - Thomas gets murdered and Moore’s set-up to take the
fall. Discovered by the police, with the corpse minutes after the crime is
committed, he panickes, slugs a cop and goes on the run.
Fleeing
south to Ohio, Moore starts on a search for the real killer and the reasons
he’s been put in the frame. A few days in Ohio, encountering more black/white
disharmony as well as some small acts of kindness, in particular from Frances,
the daughter of his temporary landlord, Moore with few answers heads back to
New York to continue his hunt.
At
the end of the book, with the crime solved, Moore tired of the detective game and
tired of his whingeing girlfriend’s vision of their future together and her
greater regard for possessions than love heads south again to re-connect with
Frances, to hopefully live happily ever after?
Lacy
resurrected Toussaint Moore once more in the 1964 novel – Moment Of Untruth.
(Not something that’s on my TBR Pile.)
3 plus from 5, so we'll go to a 4!
This copy was a Blackmask pdf
file that was emailed to me some years ago, by a fellow crime fiction fan in
the US
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