Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed

 

Marc Blatte's debut novel, Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed, is billed as an urban/hip hop noir, but that's something of a misconception. The plot does inlude characters from the realm of hip hop music, but the book is not so much noir as police procedural (Blatte is a protege of Evan Hunter a/k/a Ed McBain). Blatte does bring authentic dialogue and insight to the musicians via his own experience as an award-winning songwriter, Grammy Award nominee and co-founder of a hip-hop record label, but the theme has a more rich man/poor man context — the corruption of power and money both among those who have it and those who seek it.

The plot is seen primarily through the POV's of NYPD detective, Sal Messina (aka Black Sallie Blue Eyes), a young thug called Scholar (who manages the hip-hop group Proof Positive), and Vooko, a refugee from Kosovo. Messina hands his hands full investigating the murder of Vooko's cousin, a bouncer at a nightclub popular with by the hip-hop crowd. Black Sallie Blue Eyes, as Messina is known, uses his ability to "smell the gun," or "know what you were gonna do before you did it," to navigate a land-mine case of money, drugs, record producers, a kinky female wrestler, pampered Hamptonites and Messina's own ex-wife without triggering a potentially explosive situation that leads all the way up to the NYC mayor's office.

The street jargon used profusely throughout the novel tends to bring the pacing to a halt at times although it would be hard to imagine the characters without it, and there are also some POV changes which are a bit jarring, but overall it's an entertaining and quick read. Blatte brings a distinctive voice to his writing, a punchy musical lilt, not surprising given his songwriting background.

"What the men in the observation had just witnessed was profound. In the high-stakes game of hide-and-seek that Sallie and Scholar were playing, Sallie had found Scholar out quickly and effectively. Whether Scholar knew it or not didn't matter. Sallie had exposed Scholar's inner life, then left it like an open wound to be infected by his own paranoia and self-doubt. Now it was just a matter of time before Scholar succumbed. He was a dead man walking."

The characters are drawn well and Sallie Blue Eyes is a likeable protagonist with plenty of room to grow — and since Blatte is working on the next installment in the series, we won't have to wait too long to catch more of Sallie's brand of street philosophy.

You can check out a quickie look into the author's brand of satirical humor via this Q&A on Crime Always Pays.