The Conjure-Man Dies

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Poisoned Pen Press for an advanced copy of this reissue of a mystery and Harlem Renaissance classic.

One of the the great things about mystery stories and novels is that they have the ability to no only make you think about puzzles and who did what, but with their setting they can teach you about a place and time you might not know much about, or even thought to care about. For example Hollywood in the 1950's, the Soviet Union in the early 1980's. And other countries say France or England, or the growing in popularity Scandinavia, even Japan, and Kuala Lumpur. To this list of time and places add this lost classic of murder in 1930's Harlem. The Library of Congress Crime Classics is reissuing The Conjure-Man Dies, by Rudolph Fisher one if not the first books written by a black author, featuring a black detective and an all black cast, featuring a slice of life view of a long vanished era and place.

Dr. Archer is called by two young men to the rooms of a African conjure-man, a psychic/ psychologist, who has been murdered, seeming in a locked room with only one other man, who swears he had idea what happened to the victim. Strange things happen, the body disappears and soon the conjure-man returns, hale and hearty and with a promise that he will solve his own murder. Suspecting something much more mysterious Dr. Archer joins with Perry Dart, one of the NYPD's 10 black detectives to find out what is really going on in this baffling case.

The mystery if fun and very much of it's era. Bodies disappearing, strange rooms, odd characters, women kind of just there, a group of suspects brought together near the end for the big denouement. Plus the mix of science and pseudoscience, false clues, blind alleys and a lot of talking. Very much in the Ellery Queen S. S. Van Dine kind of stories. The writing is very good and interesting with a different narrators that take the story from the formal rooms to the streets. There is a lot of humor, and a lot of love for the characters, the neighborhood. Plus the characters are not portrayed as they would be in mystery books of this era. They are not servants, or heavies or conductors, they are doctors, detectives, and people trying to get by and seem much more real then most bit characters are portrayed in these kind of stories.

A good mystery but a better book about a time and place that has faded away, and one not known to many people. The author's death at a young age is a shame as I would think a series featuring Archer and Dart might have been successful, but that might be a charitable thought considering the era, Recommended for fans of classic mysteries and for people who want to read about Harlem before the Chester Hines and the Grindhouse Blaxploitation movies portrayed the area.