By Dennis Fischman

If you are not a private eye or a police detective, who are you, and why are you investigating a murder? That’s a key question many mystery authors must answer for us, the readers, before they can beckon us into the story.

In the Blanche White series by Barbara Neely, the answers are unusual. Blanche, despite her name, is a Black woman who makes her living by keeping house or catering for wealthy people, mostly white people. She is an outsider on the inside, a person who can be invisible as she goes about her tasks, yet someone perfectly placed to find out all the things that her employers want to keep secret.

“Blanche Passes Go” by Barbara Neely. Penguin Books, 2001, 336 pages

Why does she investigate? That answer varies from one book to the next. In her first appearance (Blanche on the Lam, 1992), it’s because she is in a strange town, she is a suspect herself, and she must find the real murderer to prove her innocence. You will find quite a few series with amateur detectives use that plot device somewhere along the way.

There’s a more unusual motivation in Blanche Passes Go. As the title implies, the game goes to a different level in this fourth (and sadly) final installment of Blanche White. The murder mystery is there, real, revealing, shocking, and sad – but it’s not the crux of the story. The center of this book is Blanche coming to terms with having been raped by a white man in her hometown years ago and not having reported it.

Blanche investigates a current murder where he is a suspect, “determined not to let him get away with another crime … nor is she willing to let his money-hungry sister marry a sweet, mentally-challenged man for his wealth” (as the publisher says). Blanche’s personal history and her work catering to people give her a unique perspective on what academics were calling “race, class, and gender” a sort of unholy trinity, when this series was being written at the close of the 20^th century.

Like other readers, I am sorry that my fellow Pittsburgh native Barbara Neely never completed more books, although I am sure her time spent on activism was just as productive. (Neely designed and directed the first community-based corrections facility for women in Pennsylvania, directed a branch of the YWCA, and headed a consultant firm for non-profits.) I’m glad the Mystery Writers of America created a scholarship program in her name for Black crime fiction writers – one for an already published author, and another for someone getting started in publishing.

You might want to read those award winners. You will certainly want to read the Blanche White series, starting at the beginning, for well-written mysteries and for Blanche’s incisive wit.

Dennis Fischman is a member of the Somerville Public Library’s Mystery Book Club and an inveterate reader.