Barbara Neely’s Blanche series

I recently read an article on The Root about the popularity of Kathleen Stockett’s The Help. While I haven’t read The Help yet, I found Hopkinson’s  article interesting in that she talks about how, while she enjoyed the book tremendously, she felt frustrated: “In the world of publishing and Hollywood, it helps to be talented, as Stockett clearly is. But it also helps to be white.” Hopkinson later writes

Let’s look at the criminally underrated and uncelebrated work of Barbara Neely. Her Blanche White series is absolutely brilliant, pitch-perfect and probes at the issues of race and class from the perspective of a murder-solving black maid with a biting wit. I remember discovering them years ago, and thinking Neely’s Blanche is like a feminist response to Walter Mosley’s hard-boiled detective character Easy Rawlins. They are the same, delicious, pulpy read, sly commentaries about class and society. There is not a false note in any of her books. This is a writer who knows the correct Ebonics syntax of the verb “to be.” I can’t recommend her series enough. Buy every single one. Each takes about a day to read. And each gives you the same made-for-book-club pleasure that The Help gives you.

I took her recommendation and have finished Blanche on the Lam and Blanche Among the Talented Tenth. The Library has all four of Barbara Neely’s books in our collection. They’re nice, slim volumes…short, but also rather dark–not cozy mysteries, but engaging and well-written ones. Reading it to me, it seemed like an older time–more like the 1950’s or 60’s–but Blanche mentions a Run-DMC tape at the beginning, and at the end an African American Miss America, and Joints Chief of Staff, which seem to place it in the 1980’s, though the first book was published in 1993. Blanche is a domestic worker, and I found her narrative an interesting exploration of class issues as well. Blanche on the Lam finds Blanche on the run after being jailed for a bad check in her hometown of Fairleigh, North Carolina. She starts working for a wealthy family and once the bodies start turning up, Blanche investigates to avoid becoming the prime suspect. In Blanche and the Talented Tenth, Blanche has moved and is living nearby in Roxbury. She heads to Amber Cove, Maine, to a posh black resort, where she still encounters prejudice, secrets, and crime. Visiting her website, it also looks like Barbara is a fellow Bostonian as well, and I highly recommend her series!