The Conjure-Man Dies

Starred review from January 15, 2022
Library of Congress Crime Classics presents a welcome resurrection of the first nonserialized mystery novel by a Black author, featuring an all-Black cast, originally published in 1932. Bubber Brown and his friend Jinx Jenkins have come to consult N'Gana Frimbo, a Harvard-educated psychic who's known throughout Harlem. In the middle of their session, Frimbo cries out, "Why do you not see?" and collapses, to be pronounced dead soon after by neighboring physician John Archer. Frimbo, whose friends and clients ranged from his landlord, undertaker Samuel Crouch, to drug addict Doty Hicks and Spider Webb, a numbers runner who works for Crouch's friend Si Brandon, the king of Harlem crime, was privy to many secrets, and any number of people might have wanted him dead. But how could anyone have beaten him unconscious and suffocated him by forcing the handkerchief Archer discovers down his throat when he died in the middle of a session with Brown and Jenkins, who insists against the evidence that the fingerprint on the weapon, a club fashioned from a human bone, isn't his? Joining forces with Detective Perry Dart, NYPD, Archer does his best to solve the riddle of Frimbo's life and death, unaware that an even more whopping surprise will call not only their most basic assumptions about the case, but Fisher's title into doubt. Considering its layers and layers of bafflement, the mystery is brought to a commendably logical conclusion that still leaves plenty of unresolved questions about the relations between African and American cultures for modern readers to mull. Leslie S. Klinger's uncommonly helpful introduction and footnotes place this pioneering novel in a broader historical context. It's about time this genuine classic was back in print.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.