Teddy Hayes, Blood Red Blues

Blood Red Blues

Teddy Hayes

Justin, Charles, June 2004, $12.99, 200 pp.

ISBN 193211219

After five years as a CIA operative, some of them as an assassin, Devil returns to Harlem after his father was murdered to run the family bar the Be Bop Tavern. The Harlem he comes home to is not the place he remembers. Japanese and Koreans are running businesses that used to be owned by blacks and the Asians are buying up all the real estate. It feels like Blacks live in Harlem but it is controlled by outside interests who don't serve the community.

Devil goes to the Tease Me Club where he learns that the strip club/brothel was the scene of a shooting leaving six people dead. He is surprised when he gets a call from state legislator Pete Robinson and Police Captain Max Varney asking him, because of his connections, to find the shooter as one of the men killed was a Japanese diplomat who represented powerful financial interests. At first Devil turns down the request but they are able to blackmail him into agreeing, a decision that almost gets him killed.

Harlem is a community with its own culture and style, a place that is used as the background for this dark urban gritty noir thriller. Devon plays the system but as ex-CIA he knows the moves to investigate the crime. Everything rests on a call girl known on the streets as Peter Pan who was at the scene and got out alive. Using his contacts, the hero tries to track her down because she is the only one who can identify the killer. Teddy Hayes has written an exciting crime thriller that is the first installment in what looks to be a very creative series.

Harriet Klausner