“Double the Lies,” by Patricia Raybon ( Tyndale)
Denver author Patricia Raybon’s amateur sleuth Annalee Spain was an instant hit in Raybon’s first mystery, “All That is Secret.” Annalee is a 1920s detective, a black woman who lives in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood and must deal not only with crime but with racial prejudice. After all, this is the heyday of the KKK.
In“Double the Lies,” the second mystery in Ray bo n’ s series, Annalee be friends a crying white woman she encounters in the library, lending her a handkerchief, then accompanying her home. There, the two discover the body of the woman’s husband, a barnstormer. Police find Annales’s handkerchief and want to pin the murder on her. But an officer says he’ll hold off arresting her if she can if she can find the real killer. She’s given only days.
Solving the crime takes Annalee to a Denver airshow. When police spot her, she hides in an airplane, only to become the reluctant passenger when the pilot takes off for Estes Park. The pilot is the brother of the dead man, and he is smitten with Annalee. Annales is drawn to him, too, although she is promised to Jack, a preacher. Jack, however, has disappeared.
“Double the Lies” is an intriguing mystery, with lots of twists and turns that take Annalee by air to Estes and eventually Telluride. What makes it so engaging is not just the story but Raybon’s depiction of the chilling life of a black woman in the 1920s. Every aspect of Annalee’s life is dictated by her color. She wants to find out about some paintings but can’t go to the Denver Art Museum because it doesn’t admit blacks. Her relationship with the white pilot beings the wrath of the Klan. She could be found guilty of murder with no more evidence than a handkerchief. Raybon’s book is not just a mystery but a study of what life was like for a black woman in 1920s Denver.