Todd,
Re your message below:
> Randomly, I picked up the July 1948 ELLERY
QUEEN'S
> MYSTERY MAGAZINE last
> night, and read Hughes Allison's first
contribution
> there, a borderline hb
> procedural called "Corollary," which Dannay in
his
> extensive headnote calls
> "the first attempt to project in words a
Negro
> detective who is a character
> rather than a caricature" (apparently not aware
of
> Chester Himes's work, perhaps).
Himes's cop stories about Coffin Ed and Grave-Digger didn't
start until nearly a decade after Allison's
"Corollary" was published, so Allison was, in fact, almost,
but not quite, the pioneer Queen said he was.
There was a novel in the early '30's entitled THE CONJURE MAN
DIES by Rudolph Fisher, a black MD who was part of the
literary Harlem Rennaisance in the '20's and '30's. The book
features a black NYPD detective and a black physician working
together to solve a murder. I haven't read it, so I can't say
how hard-boiled it is, and with the cop partnered with an
amateur, I have to infer that it doesn't quite pass muster as
a procedural, but, reportedly, the characters are NOT
caricatures.
In 1936, Dr. Fisher adapted the novel into a stage play,
which was recently revived Off-Broadway. Dr. Fisher died at
the age of 37, so there were no sequels to CONJURE MAN.
Even earlier mystery novels by black writers featuring black
characters include HAGAR'S DAUGHTER by Pauline Hopkins,
serialized in 1901-02 in a magazine called COLORED AMERICAN,
but apparently never published in book form, and THE BLACK
SLEUTH by John edward Bruce, about the West African operative
of the International Detective Agency, who's on the trail of
jewel thieves, serialized in McGIRT'S in 1907-09, but
apparently never completed.
> I haven't had a chance to check my copy of
Walter
> Albert's impressive new CD
> ROM version of DETECTIVE AND MYSTERY FICTION:
An
> International Bibliography
> of Secondary Sources, to see how much citation
of
> Allison there's been in
> the critical literature...or, for that matter,
I
> haven't checked to see how
> much else, if any, Hughes published as
CF.
"Corollary" was reprinted recently in Paula Wood's excellent
anthology of African-American crime fiction, SPOOKS, SPIES,
AND PRIVATE EYES. As I recall, she said that it was Hughes's
only mystery short story. Joe Hill never detected
again.
Other sources you might find useful are Frankie Y. Bailey's
OUT OF THE WOODPILE - BLACK CHARACTERS IN DETECTIVE FICTION,
Stephen F. Soitos's THE BLUES DETECTIVE - A STUDY OF AFRICAN
AMERICAN DETECTIVE FICTION, and "Roots and Riffs on the
Genre" an article by Gary Philips in the current issue of
REFLECTIONS IN A PRIVATE EYE, the PWA newsletter.
JIM DOHERTY
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