African and African-American Images in Law and Popular Culture: A Selected Bibliography (this website)

Cinemarquee: Mystery Lounge

MystNoir. A website devoted to African-American mystery writers and African-American mystery characters.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

African-American characters, particularly protagonist/sleuths, are a relatively neglected group in terms of literary study. Yet, many  novelists feature African-American characters. The issues that face African-American detectives and crime solvers are the same ones that face white sleuths; in addition, African-Americans in novels face the social problems that real life black folks face. Below is a short bibliography of novels featuring African-American heroes.

Selected Bibliography of Writers and Their Works

Bland, Eleanor Taylor, See No Evil (1999). Features Marti MacAlister, an intrepid and clever policewoman. Series.

Cose, Ellis, The Best Defense (1998). Courtroom thriller.

Emery, Lynn, Night Magic (1995). An attorney faces down a ruthless company bent on ruining the enviroment.

Emery, Lynn,  Sweet Mystery (1998). A blues musician returns to her home in Louisiana and discovers crime and corruption aimed at her family.

Hambly, Barbara, Fever Season (1998). Features physician Benjamin January. One of a series.

Holton, Hugh, Red Lightning (1998). Features a chief of detectives.

Micklebury, Penny, One Must Wait (1998). Features an African-American woman attorney investigating the death of her husband in Louisiana.  First in a series.

Mosley, Walter, Gone Fishin (1997). The first of the Easy Rawlins novels, now classics.

Neely, Barbara, Blanche Cleans Up (1997). A housekeeper doubles as a detective in this novel; one of a series.

Sallis, James, Bluebottle (1999). The hero is Lew Griffin, an erudite detective with something in common with Robert B. Parker's Spenser. Sallis is an original, however, and deserves more attention and study.

Skinner, Robert E., Cat Eyed Trouble (1998). Novel set in the thirties features a New Orleans nightclub owner. 

Taylor, Mel, Mitt Man (1999). Story of a pickpocket who flees to find fame and fortune.

Thomas-Graham, Pamela, A Darker Shade of Crimson (1998). Wonderful debut mystery novel featuring Nikki Chase, a Harvard economics professor.

Troutt, David Dante, The Monkey Suit and Other Short Fiction (1998). Stories based on real cases.

Wesley, Valerie Wilson, Easier to Kill (1998). Tamara Hayle is the private investigator in this series.

See also African American Fiction and Chester Himes Black Mystery Writers Conference and Awards.

Selected Bibliography of Reference Works

Bailey, Frankie L., Out of the Woodpile (1991).

Berger, Roger A., 'The Black Dick': Race, Sexuality, and Discourse in the L. A. Novels of Walter Mosley, 31(2) African-American Review 281-294 (Summer 1997).

Crooks, Robert, From the Far Side of the Urban Frontier: The Detective Fiction of Chester Himes and Walter Mosley, 22(3) College Literature 68-90 (October 1995).

Gosselin, Adrienne Johnson, The World Would Do Better to Ask Why Is Frimbo Sherlock Holmes?: Investing Liminality in Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure-Man Dies, 32(4) African-American Review 607-619 (Winter 1998).

Heglar, Charles, Rudolph Fisher and the African American Detective, 30(3) Armchair Detective 300-305 (1997).

Jablon, Madelyn, 'Making the Faces Black': The African-American Detective Novel, in Changing Representations of Minorities East and West 26-40 (Larry E. Smith, 1996).

Lock, Helen, A Case of Mis-Taken Identity (1994).

Mason, Theodore O., Jr., Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins: The Detective and Afro-American Fiction, 14(4) The Kenyon Review 173-183 (Fall 1992).

Multicultural Detective Fiction (Adrienne Johnson Gosselin ed., 1999).

Schweighaeuser, Jean-Paul, Chester Himes: Romancier noir noir, Europe, August/September 1984, at 664.

Soitos, Stephen F., The Blues Detective: A Study of African-American Detective Fiction (1997). 

Spooks, Spies and Private Eyes (Paula L. Woods, ed.; ).

Turner, Darwin T., The Rocky Steele Novels of John B. West, 6 Armchair Detective 226-231 (1973). West was a practicing physician as well as the writer of "hard-boiled" detective stories.

Van Dover, J.K., et al., Isn't Justice Always Unfair? (1997). Essays on the southern detective.

Walters, Wendy W., Limited Options: Strategic Maneuverings in Himes's Harlem, 28(4) African-American Review 615-631 (Winter 1994).

Weixlmann, Joe, Culture Clash, Survival, and Trans-Formation: A Study of Some Innovative Afro-American Novels of Detection, 38(1) Mississippi Quarterly 21-32 (Winter 1984/1985).

Young, Mary, Walter Mosley, Detective Fiction, and Black Culture, 32(1) Journal of Popular Culture 141-150 (Summer 1998).