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A review by jakewritesbooks
Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neely
4.0
There's a sort of condescension glommed onto the (mostly white) marketers of Black creatives which holds that some sort of fictional media by them with themes of racial prejudice blocking the hero's path makes it the next Get Out. Get Out's a great movie that deserves its laudations but Black writers have been using genres to address the racism they feel for a long time.
Barbara Neely does that here. Strip it of its context and it's a cozy mystery: a maid solving a small town crime within the confines of the home she works in. But Neely is telling the bigger story of racism in the south. Misogynoir, labor, even ableism all get addressed in this packed book that, while overwritten and a bit too expository, is still quite an engaging read.
I would be annoyed otherwise with the fact that Blanche unraveled most of the mystery while quietly leaning into closed doors and listening. This has been in the mystery writers bag of tricks for generations and is usually an ill-conceived shortcut. However, it goes to exactly the story Neely wants to tell: Black women are usually invisible, especially when they are The Help. They are seen when food needs to be delivered, laundry washed, medicine administered, and they are otherwise not felt or heard. Blanche uses this to her advantage and its clever.
I was hoping the story would be more streamlined but I appreciated what Barbara Neely was doing. I'd like to read more to see how her writing evolves in this series.
Barbara Neely does that here. Strip it of its context and it's a cozy mystery: a maid solving a small town crime within the confines of the home she works in. But Neely is telling the bigger story of racism in the south. Misogynoir, labor, even ableism all get addressed in this packed book that, while overwritten and a bit too expository, is still quite an engaging read.
I would be annoyed otherwise with the fact that Blanche unraveled most of the mystery while quietly leaning into closed doors and listening. This has been in the mystery writers bag of tricks for generations and is usually an ill-conceived shortcut. However, it goes to exactly the story Neely wants to tell: Black women are usually invisible, especially when they are The Help. They are seen when food needs to be delivered, laundry washed, medicine administered, and they are otherwise not felt or heard. Blanche uses this to her advantage and its clever.
I was hoping the story would be more streamlined but I appreciated what Barbara Neely was doing. I'd like to read more to see how her writing evolves in this series.