Real-life explorer Henson gets superhero treatment

By Oline H. Cogdill

Henson has superhero qualities, Phillips is careful to make him a regular person who just happens to have exceptional skills. He also needs a job and is now working as a freelance bodyguard.

Henson’s presence interferes with Dutch Schultz’s plan to take control of Harlem’s numbers racket while the explorer also is targeted by the shady Medusa Council, who want a meteorite that Henson retrieved from an expedition.

Phillips uses the background of the Harlem Renaissance with aplomb while sprinkling in reallife people such as the first Black aviatrix, Bessie Coleman, poet Langston Hughes, inventor Nikola Tesla, author Dashiell Hammett, writer Zora Neale Hurston and many more who, no doubt, will send readers back to Google. There is even talk of Paul Robeson (again, Google!) playing Henson in a movie

— he didn’t. But Delroy Lindo did in the 1998 TV movie “Glory & Honor.” Henson also is mentioned in E.L. Doctorow’s novel “Ragtime” and the musical based on it.

While the entertainment value is high in “Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem,” Phillips shows the racism Henson encountered on a daily basis. With its echoes of the Doc Savage series and the Indiana Jones movies, “Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem” should make for long-running series.

Oline H. Cogdill can be reached at olinecog@aol. com.

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— Publishers Weekly

Gary Phillips is the author of “Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem.”