One Murder at a Time: A Casebook. Richard A. Lupoff
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to be caring and compassionate.
These traits are not immediately obvious when the reader first encounters Bart Lindsey in The Comic Book Killer (1988), the first book in the Lindsey/Plum series. When we first meet him, Lindsey is a man in his mid-30s, living in Walnut Creek, California, with his widowed mother. Lindsey’s mother has been widowed since his father was killed during the Korean War when a MiG crashed into the destroyer he was aboard. Left alone, pregnant with Bart, his teenaged mother retreated from reality. Although she somehow managed to raise her son, “Mother” (as Lindsey calls her) never completely left the past. As an adult, Bart had settled into the role of primary care giver to his parent. Then he finds himself investigating a quarter million dollar claim involving a stolen comic book collection. In the course of this investigation, he learned the truth about his father’s death. He also met Officer Marvia Plum of the Berkeley Police Department. From then on, Bart Lindsey was never quite the same. He began to move out of his dull, safe rut. In the process he freed both himself and his mother. Eventually Mother remembered what year it was, got a job, found a beau, got married, and moved out. Meanwhile, Lindsey continued to find himself involved in unusual cases as he shyly courted Marvia Plum.
Marvia Plum was the first woman in Bart Lindsey’s life. But Lindsey was not Marvia’s first man. She was the single mother of a young son, Jamie, who lived with her parents, Marcus and Gloria. As a corporal in the military police, stationed in Germany, Marvia had become involved with an officer, a young lieutenant. When she became pregnant, he reluctantly married her (after she had resigned from the Army). Immediately after their child was born, they were divorced. When Marvia met Bart, she was free—but the relationship was complicated. Bart Lindsey was white, sweet, and timid. Marvia Plum was black, cop tough, and man wary. In The Cover Girl Killer (1995), Marvia broke Bart’s heart by running off to Nevada to marry Willie Fergus, a man she knew when she was in the Army. But Willie Fergus was no prize as a husband, and a few months later Marvia left him and returned to Berkeley.
In The Radio Red Killer (1997), Marvia Plum does some solo sleuthing while regretting the mistakes she has made in her life. As we learn in The Silver Chariot Killer (1996), Bart also has some regrets. He misses Marvia. He has moved to Denver, traveled to New York and Rome, slept with several other women (all of whom seem attracted to him in spite of his timid nature), but he still regrets his loss of Marvia and Jamie and the family they might have been. When Plum and Lindsey are brought back together in the last story in this casebook, the reader wonders what will happen next. The hopeless romantics among us who like happy endings—or as happy as one can get in modern relationships—will no doubt hope for a reconciliation between the two.
Whatever happens on a personal level between Marvia and Bart, readers of the Lindsey/Plum series have been treated in the seven books in the series to an excursion through 20th century American history and culture. Rare comic books, classic cars, World War II bombers, archival films, pulp novels, art treasures, old time radio have all figured in the cases encountered by Lindsey and Plum. Along the way, readers have been gently tutored in social and political history. From eccentric comic book collectors to Jewish neo-Nazis; from freedom fighters in the Spanish Civil War to Tuskegee Airmen who flew in World War II; from black film makers to pulp fiction cover girls; from New York politicians and cops to Berkeley computer whizzes and drug dealers—readers of the series have been introduced to these and more.
Incidentally, readers who bothered to count will have noticed that there seem to be more female professionals in these books than one often finds in the pages of crime fiction. Not only is there Marvia Plum (first a patrol officer then later a sergeant), but there is also Marvia’s boss, Lt. Dorothy Yamura. It is Yamura—schoolmarmish in appearance when on-duty, surprising stylish off-duty—who provided Bart Lindsey with his guiding premise for crime solving: Be suspicious of coincidences. Other professional women in the series include the two female SPUDS operatives, from Chicago and New Orleans, who provide Bart with assistance when he is in their cities. There is also a New York City homicide detective, several university professors with expertise in various areas, and a radio station manager. In the Lindsey/Plum series, women, as professionals and in various other roles, are everywhere. They are occasionally wicked, but more often competent and smart.
In this series, people also come in an assortment of colors, religions, and sexual orientations. The characters of color play important and non-stereotypical roles. This is not something to be taken lightly. In early crime fiction, non-white characters were often assigned “walk-on” parts as servants and/or comic relief, or occasionally as villains. Even after Harlem physician Rudolph Fisher published his sophisticated classic crime novel The Conjure-Man Dies (1932) and even after Chester Himes broke new ground in crime fiction with his 1950s-1960s police procedurals featuring his tough guy police detectives, black (and other racial minority) characters continued to find crime fiction less than hospitable. Of course, since the revolution spawned by the Civil Rights and women’s rights era of the 1960s, both women and racial minorities have been presented in more positive ways in crime fiction. However, more positive does not always mean complete integration into the fabric of a series as equals and as individuals. This is what Richard Lupoff does. His characters are all presented as individuals, with flaws and virtues, demanding to be understood for who they are. For example, Lupoff dares to make Marvia’s mother, Gloria, a cold, distant woman who is neither loving nor likeable. But at the same time, Gloria is a competent and responsible career woman and she has opened her home to her grandson, Jamie, and later to her daughter on Marvia’s return to Berkeley. Gloria is not someone with whom one would care to spend a great deal of time. However, she is not a stereotype. Gloria is Gloria.
In the series, Lindsey and Plum are the conduits through which the reader acquires information about everything from classical music and jazz to Jewish history. In the course of their investigations, we learn about comic book collecting, classic cars, and black film makers of the early twentieth century who made “race movies” for black audiences. Along the way, Lindsey, Plum, and other characters provide passing commentary on American society and race/class/gender and power. For example, in The Sepia Siren Killer (1994), while Plum and Lindsey are discussing the strategy that might be used in the case of a wealthy offender, Marvia tells Bart:
“They made two mistakes in that case [Patty Hearst]. One was, Patty’s millionaire family weren’t satisfied with a local lawyer for their little girl. So they drug in F. Lee Bailey from the East Coast. He came like an arrogant hired gun, which is exactly what he was. He didn’t know the Bay Area, he attacked some sacred local icons, and he lost the jury. And then Patty herself really blew it. She went on the stand when she didn’t have to, and then she changed her mind and refused to answer questions that she didn’t like. Really bad mistake. Got the judge peeved, got the jury mad at her.” (Lupoff, 222)
Or, another example, in The Bessie Blue Killer (1994) during an interlude in Marvia’s apartment, Marvia puts on a CD—Bessie Smith singing a song about a murder that Lindsey describes as “blood-curdling.” But he starts to like the music. Then he asks Marvia, What became of Bessie Smith? She tells him.
“She was hit by a cab,” Marvia said. “They rushed her to the nearest hospital. She might have survived, but they refused to treat her there. It was a white hospital, you see. So they took her to a black hospital, but by then it was too late. She was forty-two years old” (Lupoff, 40).
Or, in The Classic Car Killer (1992), Marvia comments on the first time she and Bart met:
“Oh, Bart.” She put her hand on his cheek. It felt marvelous and he didn’t want her to take it away, but he didn’t reach up and hold it there either. “You’re so transparent, Bart. I could read you that day. You were just doing your job, you nice safe brown-shoe boy from suburbia, and here was this cop getting in your way, and not only weren’t you getting all the service you expected, the cop is a black woman! I get that from enough white men, I know what they’re thinking. A female cop is a slap in the preconceptions and a black one is another. Most of them adjust pretty fast.” (Lupoff, 188)
However, some characters in the series have difficulty adjusting to slaps to their preconceptions. Some are motivated by jealousy or fear or greed. Others have lost their way and become destructive. This is the case in The Radio Red Killer (1997), when Marvia Plum, in the midst of investigating the murder