Black Orchid Blues: "The Wonderful Ambiance of a Classic, Pulp-Era Serial"
Lanie Price
“Persia Walker returns again to the fabled Harlem of the 1920s in her third novel, BLACK ORCHID BLUES, and revives Lanie Price, the protagonist first introduced in DARKNESS AND THE DEVIL BEHIND ME. This time, however, she goes deeper behind the scenes of giddy high life with a story brimming over with deceit, family secrets and murder.
“Society columnist Lanie Price finally shows up at the Cinnamon Club in Harlem to see and hear Queenie Lovetree, the gravel-voiced singer that everyone in town is talking about. She is not disappointed. In fact, Queenie Lovetree — with her bawdy patter, sexy lyrics and ritzy frock — is everything Lanie expected, and then some. Because Lanie knows that Queenie Lovetree is, in reality, a man in drag.
“That’s only one of the many items in Queenie’s mysterious past that Lanie hopes to learn. But just as Queenie sits down to begin an interview for Lanie’s column, an armed man barges into the club and opens fire on the audience while kidnapping Queenie.
“Lanie narrowly escapes with her life, but her instincts as a former crime reporter kick in and she immediately begins an investigation into Queenie’s abduction. Suspects include the owner of a rival club who failed to lure Queenie away from her current boss, as well as the Cinnamon Club’s former featured singer who lost his job when Queenie became the star attraction. Hours pass, but the anticipated ransom demand from the kidnappers never arrives.
“Then a package containing gruesome proof of the kidnappers’ intention arrives at Lanie’s door. But when she opens the package, she discovers that it was not intended for her, but rather for the respected and well-to-do family that lives near Lanie in the residential section known as Strivers’ Row. What possible connection could there be between the nightclub singer and this quiet family? That’s the question that puts Lanie on a twisted path strewn with dangerous lies, double-crossings and ultimately murder.
“The period and locale are so well-known to Walker, after two previous novels that she presents them effortlessly yet effectively. She is informative when it suites her narrative purpose, but her detailing is never intrusive. After a few pages this long-past era feels as familiar as our contemporary world.
“The same holds true for Walker’s characters. Even the most outrageous of the bunch — like the denizens of Harlem’s gay nightlife who cautiously confide in Lanie — are as easily believable as the Irish cop who leads the police investigation into the kidnapping, or Sam Delany, Lanie’s protective editor and sometime lover. Then there is Lanie herself, whose first-person narration is as intimate about her own personal insecurities as it is about her beloved Harlem.
“The only drawback in all of this is the multilayered complications of Walker’s antagonist, and thus, the novel’s driving conflict. Several scenes of drawn-out explanations are inevitably needed to tie everything together. This would otherwise be the kiss of death to a novel’s pacing. But Walker manages to keep us so involved with the story that we willingly plunge through all this exposition, even when it sometimes stains credibility. The payoff is that BLACK ORCHID BLUES often has the wonderful ambience of a classic, pulp-era serial.
“Advance reviews have favorably compared this work to the period novels of Walter Mosley and James Ellory. Yet Walker is well on her way to establishing a distinctive voice of her own. With a character like Lanie Price helping her, that time won’t be too far off.” —Alan Cranis, Bookgasm
“I fell in love with this book when I saw the cover. The gorgeous black dame with the gat in her hand harks back to the best of pulp fiction, but Black Orchid Blues, a historical novel set in 1920s Harlem, is better than any pulp I ever read. This is the (second) in the series starring journalist/society reporter Lanie Price and it’s simply terrific.
“The Black Orchid is a blues singer, a stunning transvestite who’s on the way to becoming the toast of New York. Lanie is in the midst of an interview at the Cinnamon Club, the Orchid’s venue, when a gunman charges in, shoots the bouncer, shames and degrades and then kidnaps the Orchid, and leaves, shooting the club up. It’s murder, massacre, and who knows what or why? Those and a lot of other questions put Lanie on her own trail to find out just what was going on that night at the Cinnamon Club when a very secretive queen was taken.
“Persia Walker has it all, great dialogue, terrific characters and a marvellous historical backdrop, skillfully crafted, to go with a slick, smart plot. Read this and you’ll wonder how you missed the last Lanie Price book.” —The Globe and Mail
“‘Good Lord, if that woman gets into one more car with one more gangster I’m gonna throw this book across the room!’ the reviewer thought when reporter/detective wannabe Lanie Price did the above yet again. Price is the heroine of the ongoing series of mystery/crime novels by Persia Walker but getting in cars with thugs is the least of Lanie’s problems in this latest page turner.
“The story begins with the abduction of the eponymous drag queen from a club where she’s performing — and not only is the Black Orchid kidnapped in front of witnesses, including Lanie, but several patrons are gratuitously murdered as well. From there the plot takes twists and turns that absolutely no one sees coming, least of all Lanie, who’s determined to get to the bottom of the crime. And this time she’s going to discover that the bottom is rock bottom.
“Lanie is a brilliantly drawn character, stubborn, smart, annoying, sometimes petty, often foolhardy, deeply compassionate. As a recent widow she’s vulnerable as well. Her vulnerability is something her boss and love interest, Sam, understands. He’s overprotective and she chafes when he forbids her, again and again, from getting too involved in a case that gets more grotesque and convoluted by the minute. She’s supposed to be the society columnist for their paper, after all, and not a detective.
“But the Lanie Price novels are set during the Harlem Renaissance, when opportunities for African American women to become sleuths and even policewomen were probably rather scarce. The thing is Sam is often right, and sometimes when Lanie sticks her neck out even more mayhem results, which makes her get even more involved out of guilt or a sense of duty toward the victim. Her friend down at the police precinct, the Irish cop Blackie, is even less happy with her meddling than Sam is — at one point in Black Orchid Blues, he has her arrested for obstruction.
“Of course, Lanie’s sprung out of jail and immediately gets into situations that might make the rest of us long for the security of a cell, at least for a night. If it’s the rotten underbelly of the Harlem Renaissance and Strivers’ Row you’re looking for, Walker gives it to you in spades. But be assured the traumas Lanie witnesses and endures in this novel won’t stop her, or her creator. The reviewer eagerly looks forward to more Lanie Price adventures!” — Arlene McKanic, Caribbean Life
“This brisk, informative novel is a real delight, and a burgeoning franchise you’d be wise to be following from here at its start.” —Chicago Center for Literature and Photography
“In Walker’s exuberant third Harlem Renaissance mystery (after 2008′s Darkness and the Devil Behind Me), new performing sensation Queenie Lovetree, a six-foot-three drag queen who bills himself as the “Black Orchid,” approaches Lanie Price, the Harlem Chronicle’s society columnist, at the Cinnamon Club. Queenie wants Lanie to profile him, but a man in a Stetson and trench coat, armed with a tommy gun, interrupts their conversation and forces Queenie to leave the club. Lanie’s involvement in the search for Queenie brings her into conflict with her editor, Sam Delaney, and Det. John Blackie–and into contact with such diverse denizens of 1920s Harlem as notorious loan shark Stax Murphy and transvestite Jack-a-Lee Talbot. This dark, sexy novel takes readers from the homes of Striver’s Row professionals to the Faggots’ Ball, Harlem’s “largest drag ball of the year,” as Lanie struggles to make sense of the kidnapper’s increasingly bizarre behavior.” —Publishers Weekly
“Harlem in the 1920s: The Cotton Club; louche parties where Barbara Stanwyck, Tallulah Bankhead, and Langston Hughes rub shoulders; African American professionals know they’ve arrived when they move up to Strivers’ Row; and everything is scored to a hot jazz beat. Lanie Price has her beat, too. Introduced in Walker’s Darkness and the Devil Behind Me, she is the persistent, not to say foolhardy, society columnist for the Harlem Chronicle. When a new blues singer, Queenie Lovetree, billed as [the] Black Orchid, bursts onto the Harlem firmament, Lanie is there to do the interview. It’s not her fault that Queenie is kidnapped right in the middle of it and that a mysterious package clearly meant for someone else is delivered to Lanie’s door. Lanie keeps insisting it’s not her fault up until she finds herself alone in a house with a stone-cold killer … VERDICT: Surrender your critical faculties at the door, put a Bessie Smith platter on the Victrola, and go with the flow on this mystery/romance/history mix. You just might like it.” —Library Journal
“In her third novel, Walker sticks with the Harlem Renaissance setting she used in Harlem Redux (2008) but introduces a new lead character in what is likely the beginning of a series. When Lanie Price, society columnist for the Harlem Chronicle, decides to check out a sultry blues singer, Queenie Lovetree, who is drawing raves at the declassé Cinnamon Club, she walks into a maelstrom. Queenie is kidnapped by a machine-gun-toting assailant who shoots up the club, killing the bouncer and numerous patrons. Lanie is on the case and soon discovers that Queenie has a closetful of secrets, some of which lead to Lanie’s neighbors on Harlem’s upscale Strivers’ Row. Walker stumbles a bit in attempting to keep the careening narrative on track, but the tale is strengthened by plenty of period detail and a fine feel for both the gay underworld of Harlem in the 1920s and the sociopsychological dynamics of her characters. Best of all, Lanie has the makings of a strong series heroine. Walter Mosley fans, in particular, should look for more.” —Booklist
