Review: Evergreen: A Willie Black Mystery by Howard Owen

It is New Year’s Day in 2018 as Evergreen: A Willie Black Mystery by Howard Owen begins in a way that is very familiar to many of us of a certain age. Between his bladder and the cat sitting on his chest, sleeping much past eight in the morning is proving impossible. While hosting a party at your own place solves the transportation issue, there is one heck of a mess to clean up on the morning after. Cleaning up and thinking about having to go work at the paper later gets pushed aside when Richard Slade calls.

Richard Slade and Willie Black have a complicated history familiar to readers of the series. In the here and now, his mother, Philomena Slade, is in the hospital and is not doing so well. According to Richard Slade, she wants to tell him something important about Artie Lee.

Artie Lee was Willie Lee Black’s father and he died a little over a year after Willie was born.  Peggy never talks about him and Wille knows next to nothing except that he was African American. Back in 1960, African Americans and Caucasians could not legally marry. The simple act of dating was frowned upon by a significant portion of society. That belief that the races should not mingle extended to the child of such a union. That reality has been a major part of Willie Black’s entire life.

As it turns out, Philomena Slade has been quietly maintaining Artie’s grave in a local cemetery that has been nearly forgotten in the mists of time. All she wants is for Willie to maintain the grave site after she passes. A simple request that is far more complicated than it first appears. Now that he has been told of the grave site, something he has never known until now, all Willie wants is to learn all he can about his father and what happened that fateful night decades ago. That night and his death changed everything for everyone.

Willie Black digs into the past in a quest to find out what happened long ago. His mother, Peggy, refuses to talk about it so he has to talk to others who were around at the time and know what happened. Getting folks to talk is not easy and it soon becomes clear that what he thought he knew all these years was not true. History and race relations have always been a subtext if not a main theme of this series and such is the case here as Willie unearths hard truths that some would much prefer left buried in the past.

Evergreen: A Willie Black Mystery by Howard Owen is the latest published installment of a complex and very good series that began with Oregon Hill. This is not a static series. Characters age, people die by the hand of man or natural causes, and relationships evolve and change, so it is strongly recommended that readers start at the beginning and work their way forward. Additionally, this read contains frequent references to past events and are detailed enough to be considered spoilers. 

My review copy came by way of the Bachman Branch of the Dallas Public Library System shortly before the shutdown in mid-March due to the pandemic. Next in the series is Belle Isle which I have here in my print TBR pile after my ongoing reviews of this series came to the attention of the publisher.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2020

Review: Scuffletown: A Willie Black Mystery by Howard Owen

Scuffletown: A Willie Black Mystery by Howard Owen is the seventh book in The Willie Black Mystery Series that began with Oregon Hill. For readers new to this series, this is a series that is best read in order as the characters age, relationships change, and much like in the real world, the past is always present and not always in a good way.

It is a lovely afternoon in early April as the book opens and Scuffletown Park is about to be in the news in a big way. A small park surrounded by homes and apartments, it is where Willie Black and the first of four wives started their lives as young married people. Based on the amount of blood splashed across one of the brick walkways, something did go down the night before. The cops had been called out around midnight for a fight of some sort. Upon their arrival, there was nobody in the park. They certainly did not find a body in the dark park and never saw the blood on the bricks. With no body and no signs of a struggle or anything amiss, they soon packed up and moved on to other crimes in the city.

It was not until this morning, a Thursday, that it became clear something bad had gone down in the old park. A jogger cutting through by way of the alley that runs down on side of the park called the cops after he saw the massive amount of blood on the brick stones. Despite a thorough search and spending hours at what clearly is a crime scene, the police still do not have a weapon, a body, or any evidence of an actual crime.

That soon changes when a video, taken by a resident, suddenly turns up. A video that clears shows Willie’s friend and roommate, Abe Custalow, clearly standing over what appears to be a dead man. Almost everyone at the paper, on the police force, and at various local watering holes, knows that Abe has a bedroom in Willie Black’s condo unit. Abe is family and that has not changed. What has changed is that he is now a suspect and the police are looking hard for him. Abe has a criminal record, one that is far more complicated than it would appear from a dry read of the facts. Willie is absolutely positive that Abe did not do this no matter what one can see on a video.

Even though, from the start, Abe wants nothing done on his behalf, Willie begins digging into what Abe has been doing lately and what could have happened in the park. Even though Abe and almost everybody else wants him to stay out of it, reporter Willie Black is not about to stop in his quest to save Abe from himself. Before long he is risking his job, his life, and even his friendship with Abe to prove that his old friend did not do the crime. He does so because the past always matters.

This installment of a complicated series is yet another very good read. While the primary storyline is the case as outlined above, there are ongoing secondary storylines at work that continue previous events from earlier books. The result is another complicated read of complex characters, family drama, and plenty of mystery.

This is a really good series and one that should be read in order. Scuffletown: A Willie Black Mystery by Howard Owen is highly recommended.

The series to this point and my reviews:

Oregon Hill (June 14, 2019)

The Philadelphia Quarry (July 19, 2019)

Parker Field (September 2019)

The Bottom (October 4, 2019)

Grace (November 15, 2019)

The Devil’s Triangle (January 10, 2020)

My reading copy came from the Timberglen Branch of the Dallas Public Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2020