UI grad’s `Harlem’ is mystery, history
By Dale Jones, Gazette Staff Writer

Steven Philip Jones of Cedar Rapids has entered the mystery-adventure genre with the intriguing “King of Harlem” (Writer’s Club Press, $14.95, 248 pages), a print-on-demand paperback.

Jones, a University of Iowa graduate with young adult novels and comic book writing among his credits, calls “King of Harlem” the first in a series of novels about Sassafras Winters, a retired Chicago Cubs pitcher and fledgling private investigator.  Completing the detective team is Winters’ enigmatic valet, an interesting character named Chinaman.

Jones opens the series with a history-based novel, inserting Winters and Chinaman into the “Voodoo Macbeth” situation of 1936 Harlem.  A young Orson Welles is directing a black production of “Macbeth,” a WPA Federal Theatre Project undertaking.  But he’s also stirring up a controversy.  The Lafayette Theater is being picketed by angry Harlem locals, convinced by the Communist Workers’ Party that Welles is producing minstrel Shakespeare that will demean and insult blacks.

The controversy is heated enough—including death threats—that the Harlem Unit of the Federal Theatre Project reaches out to Chicago, hiring Winters as Welles’ bodyguard.

Things really heat up when one of Welles’ actors is charged with murdering an A-list white man.   While Winters and Chinaman are protecting Welles, they take on the added task of trying to clear the actor, who claims he’s innocent.

Jones has a nice flair for storytelling.  The plot is nicely constructed and cemented with a welcoming prose style and solid research.  The sense of time and place is palpable, a necessity in a historical novel.

The characters are well-crafted and enticing.  Winters has the feel of someone you could relate to, not so fictional as to deny credibility.   And I like the way Jones teased the reader along, waiting until well into the book to explain the genesis of the strange relationship between Winters and Chinaman.

The book has flaws, but they’re minor and mostly related to the need for better editing—or at least better proofreading.  Words are misspelled and misused on occasion.

But there’s much to recommend here

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