Room to Swing

(Paperback)

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Description

Meet Touissant Moore, considered the "first truly credible African-American private eye in fiction" "It boiled down to a white cop and black me, and he had the 'difference' in his hand." Toussaint Moore is a college-educated, decorated war veteran. Because he's also a Black man, his employment options are limited, so he ekes out a living as a private eye serving Black clients in and around Harlem where he lives. When he's hired by producers of a television reality show called "You--Detective!" to keep tabs on the whereabouts of an accused child molester until the episode airs, the gig goes quickly south; Touie finds the man murdered, and himself framed for the deed. Needing to flee, he goes to the small Ohio town where the deceased was wanted for his crime, thinking the key to the murder may lie there. As Virgil Tibbs would experience years later in John Ball's IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, Touie encounters a whole new level of resistance and racism as a Black man asking questions in a small-minded, predominantly white town. As Scott Adlerberg states in his Feb. 2019 article for Criminal Element)- "What Lacy does in Room to Swing is consider a question Walter Mosely would more fully explore years later in his Easy Rawlins books. Lacy asks whether a black man (in the late fifties) can go everywhere he needs to, with the freedom his job requires, in order to conduct the investigation necessary to crack a case."

Reviews

"This 1958 Edgar Award winner for best novel from Lacy (1911-1968) masterfully combines a classic genre trope with a powerful depiction of the impact of racism in 1950s America. The pacing, sharp-edged prose, and characterizations are all top-notch. With any luck, this assured and memorable crime novel will lead to further reissues of Lacy's work." -- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Author Bio

ED LACY (August 25, 1911 - January 7, 1968), born Leonard "Len" S. Zinberg, was an American writer of crime and detective fiction. Lacy, who was white, is credited with creating "the first credible African-American PI" character in fiction, Toussaint "Touie" Marcus Moore. Room to Swing, his 1957 novel that introduced Touie Moore, received the 1958 Edgar Award for Best Novel.