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 of a radio personality, finds herself also faced with the question of how “Marvia the mom” should handle the fact that pre-teen Jamie and his best friend Hakeem have been experimenting with drugs. In the course of her investigation she discovered that the pair of male-female drug dealers now known as Blue Beetle and Acid Alice once had very different lives. But now they are destroying the lives of children, and “Marvia the cop” must find a way to stop them.
Throughout this series, Richard A. Lupoff takes us back and forth through time and space, interweaving, ripping apart, putting together again. As a student of history and popular culture, I find Lupoff’s ability to connect past and present and create readable, thought-provoking books that also manage to be engaging mysteries rather fascinating. The stories in this casebook are enjoyable, but I would recommend that anyone not familiar with the exploits of Hobart Lindsey and Marvia Plum start at the beginning and read his or her way through the series.
In the meantime, here’s hoping the next Lindsey/Plum book will be available soon.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Ms. Bailey’s comments were written shortly after the publication of The Radio Red Killer (1997). There would indeed be another Lindsey-and-Plum novel, The Emerald Cat Killer, but it was not to be published until 2010. The thirteen-year delay was not planned, nor had I suffered a protracted writer’s block. I continued to work on many other projects, but the planned eighth and final Lindsey-and-Plum novel, The Tinpan Tiger Killer, simply refused to emerge from that misty sea where planned-but-unwritten books drift forlornly. Finally, at the suggestion of my friend and colleague Michael Kurland, I simply set it aside, cleared my mind, and —voila!—in a matter of weeks, there was The Emerald Cat Killer. Some bibliographers persist in listing The Tinpan Tiger Killer among my works. Alas, that book remains adrift on the misty sea and will probably never be written. At least, not as a Lindsey-and-Plum novel.—RAL
STAR LOTUS
“Why me?” Marvia Plum asked.
Dorothy Yamura gave her the kind of look that cops give other cops when they’re speaking in private. No civilians around. No media around. No politicians around. No civil rights activists around.
“You know, I’d like to be treated as a cop for once. I like to think I made sergeant because I’m a good cop, not because I’m an African-American female.”
“Don’t forget to add single mother.” Dorothy Yamura leaned back in her chair. “And I’d like to think I made lieutenant because I’m a good cop, too, Marvia. Not because the old Irishman was suffering from white guilt over the detention camps. Well, O’Hara’s retired now and I’ve got his job and you’ve got mine and we’ve got a serial killer in Berkeley. At least, I think we’ve got a serial killer.”
Marvia grinned, not happily. “How many bodies does it take to make the case? How many have there been now, five, six?”
“Five.”
“And you’re sure they’re the work of one killer?”
Dorothy Yamura shook her head. She wore civilian clothes, the dress-for-success look. With her glossy hair pulled behind her head and her thin northern Japanese features, she looked like a bank executive or the newest partner in a major California law firm. She did not look like a cop.
Neither did Marvia Plum—or she would not have, to an observer from an earlier era. But in this age, a black female in a smart, form-fitting police sergeant’s uniform did not draw the stares and comments she once would have.
“We called in our tame consultant from the University,” Yamura explained. “These murders have some of the earmarks of the classic serial killer. But others are missing. In fact, some of the signs point straight away from a serial killer. Some of them make me wonder if they’re even connected.”
She extended a slim, meticulously manicured hand and tapped a glossy fingernail on the top folder on her desk. “Look at these, Marvia. How familiar are you with this series?”
“I’ve followed them. Remember, Telegraph Avenue was my old beat. I’ve had enough cases that centered there. It’s kind of a hobby, now, following the incident reports and the stats. Everybody knows this town would be a dead duck if the Telegraph merchants had to close up and move away. But every time we try and get a handle on the crime there, you’d think we were trying to repeal the Bill of Rights.”
Now it was Dorothy Yamura’s turn to grin wryly. “That’s why I want to pull all these cases together. We’re going to work on the notion that they are connected. If they are, if we’re right and we can figure out what’s going on and catch the perp, we can get a major bad guy off the streets and stop these killings. If we’re wrong…well, we can still tackle the cases one by one and solve them that way. Like the Twelve-Step people say, One day at a time.”
Marvia Plum nodded. “One murder at a time.”
“Okay.” Yamura seemed relieved. “What’s your plan?”
Plum pulled the stack of folders toward herself. They slid smoothly on the polished glass on top of Yamura’s desk. “I have to study these, of course. And I want to talk to your pet big-dome, and to the people who are bringing the pressure.”
“Sounds good to me. Okay, jot this down. Consultant at UC is Martha Rachel Bernstein, Ph.D. Here’s her phone number. And Mistress Moonflower, she runs that shop called Woodstock West on the avenue.”
“I know it well. And I know Mistress Moonflower.” Marvia Plum made a sour face.
“Yes. Moonflower’s after us to solve these murders. Says that the publicity is killing trade. Half of her customers are fourteen-year-old kids from Walnut Creek who think it’s daring to take the train into Berkeley and buy black light posters and rolling papers and take them home with them. Now all the mommies and daddies are cracking down on their little darlings and Woodstock West is losing money.”
“Moonflower has no other ax to grind?”
Dorothy Yamura gave her little, breathy laugh. She seemed reluctant to let the laughter out except in tiny, rationed bursts. “Woodstock West got hit by a burglar or burglars. You must have read the report. Or at least seen it on the news. Channel Two loved it. I think there was even a little network pickup.”
“Oh, yes. Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. The very one he used at the Monterey Pops in the Summer of Love. I did see the footage. That was the one he poured lighter fluid all over and set fire to.”
“Yes.
