Barbara Neely is one of my favorite authors and Blanche White is one of my favorite characters. I first discovered her in a college literary class on diversity and have followed her ever sense.

Blanch is a middle-aged, overweight feisty woman who generally works as a cleaning person and finds herself involved in a mystery. This book follows the same pattern.

Blanche decides to leave Boston where she has been working for some nasty folks, and she heads back down south. Of course she ends up embroiled in a mystery that is quite personal to her. The man who raped her years ago has now been accused of murder. The corpses pile up and Blanche takes on the good ol boys network in order to get to the bottom of it all.
Add in some mother/daughter dynamics and this book just sizzles. I most highly recommend this book. Frankly, I recommend everything Neely has ever written.

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Barbara Neely is a gifted writer. She has managed to create a protagonist who is flawed, yet heroic; hurt, yet hopeful; and perhaps most impressive, bursts into the reader's life like a real person. I am an unabashed fan of Neely and her Blanche books.

Race is an integral element of this and Neely's other books. As a working class black woman, Blanche lives with racism every day and Neely makes prejudice and discrimination a powerful presence in each book. This particular novel centered on violence against women and the message tended to overpower the story in some respects, but it doesn't diminish my appreciation for Neely's work.

As a white reader, I have learned from Blanche. The stories are more novels of race and class than mysteries and I appreciate the way Neely takes us into Blanche's head. She doesn't always behave well, but we always understand why she does what she does. For her, it makes moral or ethical sense and always gives me something to think about.

I don't know where Blanche is headed next, but I know I want to follow her progress in life and love.

Netgalley provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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Nancy Cunningham's Reviews > Blanche Passes Go

Blanche Passes Go by Barbara Neely

Blanche Passes Go by Barbara Neely

108416 Nancy Cunningham's review Jul 27, 15 · edit

3 of 5 stars bookshelves: netgalley

Read in July, 2015

Barbara Neely is a gifted writer. She has managed to create a protagonist who is flawed, yet heroic; hurt, yet hopeful; and perhaps most impressive, bursts into the reader's life like a real person. I am an unabashed fan of Neely and her Blanche books.

Race is an integral element of this and Neely's other books. As a working class black woman, Blanche lives with racism every day and Neely makes prejudice and discrimination a powerful presence in each book. This particular novel centered on violence against women and the message tended to overpower the story in some respects, but it doesn't diminish my appreciation for Neely's work.

As a white reader, I have learned from Blanche. The stories are more novels of race and class than mysteries and I appreciate the way Neely takes us into Blanche's head. She doesn't always behave well, but we always understand why she does what she does. For her, it makes moral or ethical sense and always gives me something to think about.

I don't know where Blanche is headed next, but I know I want to follow her progress in life and love.

Netgalley provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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Nancy Cunningham's Reviews > Blanche Passes Go

Blanche Passes Go by Barbara Neely

Blanche Passes Go by Barbara Neely

108416 Nancy Cunningham's review Jul 27, 15 · edit

3 of 5 stars bookshelves: netgalley

Read in July, 2015

Barbara Neely is a gifted writer. She has managed to create a protagonist who is flawed, yet heroic; hurt, yet hopeful; and perhaps most impressive, bursts into the reader's life like a real person. I am an unabashed fan of Neely and her Blanche books.

Race is an integral element of this and Neely's other books. As a working class black woman, Blanche lives with racism every day and Neely makes prejudice and discrimination a powerful presence in each book. This particular novel centered on violence against women and the message tended to overpower the story in some respects, but it doesn't diminish my appreciation for Neely's work.

As a white reader, I have learned from Blanche. The stories are more novels of race and class than mysteries and I appreciate the way Neely takes us into Blanche's head. She doesn't always behave well, but we always understand why she does what she does. For her, it makes moral or ethical sense and always gives me something to think about.

I don't know where Blanche is headed next, but I know I want to follow her progress in life and love.

Netgalley provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Neely writes genre fiction that is quite unlike any other out there: crime without the cops, mystery without a clue, and the romance of a strong, opinionated woman. It is beautiful and flawed and very real. Neely has an agenda, yes she does, but it’s revelatory to hear her concerns. She talks it all out on the page, so we get the picture from where she’s standing. She is fun but thoughtful; playful, but looks straight in the eye of some edgy situations. I mean, maybe you’ve thought about what to do when your neighbor is being beaten by her husband inside her house, loud enough for all the world to hear. Day after day. Well, Blanche comes up with a solution that worked pretty well and it didn’t involve a weapon of mass destruction or murder. Blanche constantly surprises us.

This mystery novel, #4 of the Blanche White series, brings Blanche down to North Carolina from Boston. Her sister’s son and daughter who are in her care, Malik and Taifa, are children no longer and are off for summer work in Vermont and Maine. Blanche is going to help her best friend, Ardell, with her catering business during the bicentennial celebrations in Farleigh, her hometown. Blanche had left behind in her hometown both a former lover, now married, and her rapist, so the pleasure of her homecoming was mitigated somewhat by what she might uncover hidden in her psyche. Besides, her Mom was as armored against intimacy as always, and never seemed to listen, even though she was getting older and needed more assistance than ever to keep everything in working order.

Nothing about this novel was ordinary. Almost every page expressed some real truth or revelation. Neely must have decided at some point she might be polite in company but she was going to write what she thought people ought to know. Thank god for it. Thank god for her. You don’t have to adhere to her beliefs, but by golly, she’s going to tell you what she thinks. She might even give some of us the words to articulate our own defense for a course of action we wanted to take but for one reason or another, felt unable. She makes a lot of sense. Blanche is an example to us.

As a mystery, the novel works very well. The denouement is guaranteed to blow you out of the water. As we begin, we imagine this novel might just be another opportunity to spend time with Blanche and hear her wisecracks on everything from real food to what men like. Nothing wrong with that! But Neely is too sophisticated and wise to just give us what we think we want: she’s gonna surprise us with something we can learn from, delighting us at the same time she is instructing us.

Blanche makes mistakes--really big, life-and-death mistakes--in this novel, all the while sounding like she has things pretty much under control. But we all have done that, haven’t we? Just as we think we’ve learned a few lessons and can dish it out, life and people surprise us. Neely makes us think. She teaches us how to think.

As the train from Boston to North Carolina makes it way south, Blanche slips into patios, anticipating her homecoming. It feels perfectly natural, though we know Blanche of Boston looking after teens is less lenient with herself. We want to relax, too, and hear the real Blanche fooling with Ardell, or romancing her new love interest, Thelvin.

The following quote is classic Neely:”When the children were small and using up every moment when she wasn’t working for money, she’d soothed herself with a one-day-they’ll be grown fantasy. Now that they were practically grown, instead of trying to convince them to be careful of strangers, pick up their toys, and eat their okra. She was urging them to use condoms, to avoid hard drugs, and to become their very best selves. Different topics, more stressful topics. Who started that bullshit about parenting getting easier as the children got older? What parenting lost in intensity it picked up in worriation.Or this: ”[Blanche] made up her own spiritual practice, including reverence for her Ancestors and the planet, and seeking energy from trees and healing from the sea. Some things she’d learned from African, Afro-Caribbean, Native American, and Asian ways of having a spiritual life, but she always added her personal twist. Until she’d come up with her own rituals she’d been hungry for ways to demonstrate her belief that there was more to life than she could see—ways that didn’t require her being a member of the Christian or the Muslim or any other religion that had played a part in African slavery. She also had no time for any religions that said she needed a priest or priestess to act as a go-between or worshipped a god called He. She was her own priest and goddess.”
The Blanche White series has four books. Each of them is special in its own way. Originally published in the 1990s by Penguin Books, they are now published in eBook format by Brash Books and can be bought wherever books are sold. Neely’s voice is extraordinary and outside the usual genre categorizations. The Blanche books are a little mystery, a little crime, a little romance, a little social commentary, and altogether unique. As a special treat, we are given a recipe for Blanche's Muscat Sauce from Blanche's Gig from Hell at the end.

My earlier review of Blanche Cleans Up has links to video of Neely talking about her work.

Blanche is still trying to find herself. Leo wanted to get married and she let him, but not to her. Her sister's children are growing up and have summer plans. She's decided to move home and see if she likes the catering business her friend has created. She could be partners with her and she's getting tired of cleaning houses. The only problem is that the man who raped her years ago still lives there. Can she face him?

Brash Books and Net Galley allowed to read this book for review (thank you). It will be published August 4th, so you can snag a copy then.

I like Blanche as a character. She has her own sense of right and wrong, prays to her ancestors instead of to a god, and she'll do what she needs to do to keep her children safe. Going home means she's going to have to face her mother again as well as her past and she's going to need all the strength she can gather.

She meets a new man on the train home and a tentative love life starts to grow. However, when she hears a young woman was raped and murdered, she thinks the man who raped her is still being a predator. She begins digging for the truth by talking to the help and asking questions they will answer. No one wants to be involved and most are afraid to talk about their employers.

During this story, Blanche finds out things about her father that she never knew, begins to understand her mother a bit better, and learns quite a few things about herself. She realizes that the reason she's never wanted to marry has been the result of that rape. She's still not sure about her current relationship, but she has hope.

These stories are not cut and dried. Blanche does what she can and accepts the consequences. That's about the best you can do with life and not everybody learns that. I hope to see more of Blanche; her journey isn't over yet.

This book is a great way to see how black women were treated in the a time that racism was still a sore matter in society, and how a determined woman could defy and take advantage of that situation to get things done and by any means be a force of nature determined to find out the mystery surrounding the murder of a young girl, and see that coincidences and bad luck are intertwined in a series of events that will lead her to the peace she always desired. This is the volume four of the series Blanche White, and would love to read the others.

Blanche returns to her hometown of Farleigh, NC for a working vacation, helping her friend, Ardel, with her catering business. (Malik & Taifa off camping and working for the summer.) Blanche is happy she'll be spending time with Ardel; happy and wary to see her mama. Romance is in the air on the train to Farleigh. Dreading to see the man who attacked and hurt her years ago. How will this vacation end for Blanche? Of course, there's a mystery that Blanche can't help but investigate! Excellent characterization! Warm southern charm and truths conveyed in this poignant drama. Page turner!
Book free through Netgalley for honest review.

“Blanche’s mind rang with remembered slights and taunts, and echoes of that awful, heartbreaking instant of fear that was a part of every trip into the white world—a fear of being refused or given poor service because she was black, stopped by a cop because she was black.”

I finished reading Blanche Passes Go on the second anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, who was shot dead by a cop for jaywalking. Bernie Sanders, the candidate who fancies himself the liberal savior for all progressive-minded Americans, spoke here in Seattle that day. The purpose of his talk, apart from campaigning and fundraising, was to celebrate the birthday of Social Security. The speech was disrupted by a pair of African-American women who took exception to his myopia.

So I guess you could say that everyone, even those that don’t generally enjoy mysteries, ought to be reading this book right about now. In particular, if the reader is still trying to figure out why so many people, particularly people of color, get upset with the clueless slogan “All lives matter”, this book is here, just for you. Neely approaches issues of race, class, and gender in a way that is clear but not unkind. It’s her best work to date, and could not have been published by Brash Books at a more appropriate time. My great thanks go to them and the people at Net Galley for providing me with a DRC, and to Neely for laying it all out so that anybody who has a willing heart can get the picture.

In this fourth Blanche White mystery, Blanche has gone home to Farleigh, North Carolina for a vacation, and to try partnering a catering business with her best friend, Ardell. But Farleigh is a small place, and she can’t avoid running up against David Palmer, a Caucasian man that raped her. She never reported it, of course; were they really going to haul the well-heeled, powerful white man for a sperm sample, given the long history of Caucasian men raping Black women with impunity? Not likely! So when her long-simmering rage is ignited by the sight of him, she vows to not only get mad, but to get even as well.

Blanche White novels always have multiple threads that weave in and out of the plot line, but this is the most complex and impressive yet. Not only does Blanche have to grapple with Farleigh and Palmer, she is back in her home town, and her mama is still here. Like many women, Blanche has hit middle age and menopause with a renewed, powerful yearning to know more about her mama, who never stops talking but never gives away the personal information Blanche is almost begging for, and about her father, about whom virtually nothing has been told her. Blanche decides that once a person has children, their privacy is no longer as sacred as it was before, and a lot of personal information becomes family property. I loved that.

Well into the book, Ardell accuses Blanche of sounding exactly like her mother, and Blanche is dumbfounded to realize it’s true. I threw back my head and laughed out loud. It’s the rare woman that doesn’t hear her own mother coming out of her mouth sooner or later, and the moment was built so deftly and executed so well that it landed hard on my funny-bone.

Other Blanche novels have accentuated the protagonist’s tightly held independence. Here, she meets a fine man named Thelvin on the Amtrak coming into Farleigh, and at some point, she has to decide just how flexible (or inflexible) she is going to be.

Another component is Mumsfield, an acquaintance that has Down’s Syndrome and is about to be married to someone who may be after his money. This aspect of the story, like the others, is skillfully crafted. Mumsfield is not completely helpless, and the fact that he has Down’s does not make him Blanche’s friend, as he claims to be. There is still that division of white privilege. It’s not that Blanche could not have a white friend, but it would have to be someone with ownership of what that means.

Because all of these components are told in the third person omniscient, and because the writer is a complete badass, we are privy to all the intricacies involved here. Add a problem with domestic abuse next door to the Miz Alice where Blanche is staying, and you have an interesting stew indeedy.

Highly recommended.

This series gets better with each book! They say you can't go home again, and the reader soon unravels the cause of why Blanche left her hometown all those years ago. In this fourth book, Blanche ostensibly returns home to help with her best's friend Ardell's catering business. However, she soon finds that she has to challenge the force that kept her away for so long, in this case resolving her feelings about her rapist and how she can get past the trauma. When an opportunity disguised as a mystery, presents itself to get revenge on her rapist, Blanche eventually realizes that although she has reached home, in a way she is still lost. The author interweaves social issues told from a perspective that is as relevant today with the current headlines. As for Blanche White, her revenge didn't have quite the outcome she desired, but that doesn't stop her from enjoying her present relationship with a new man in her life. You go girl!

It’s Labor Day in the US today, and the wonderful Blanche is the American working woman I most want to celebrate.

I’ve been very much enjoying the re-publication by Brash Books of the Blanche series – see earlier entries here and here, where I describe how they were ground-breaking and revolutionary when they first appeared. The books are still a great read, and I really enjoy the descriptions of Blanche’s life, family and friends, the frank comments on race relations in the USA, and the crime plot as well. I think Blanche is around 50, and – black or white – there aren’t that many protagonists who are women that age, and I like that too.

In this one Blanche has returned to her hometown of Farleigh in North Carolina, and is getting involved in a catering business run by her best friend – I found the details of that fascinating too. And, for Labor Day, boy does she work hard, always.

So it’s nice to see her enjoying the date above: this social event doesn’t really advance the plot much, but the scene draws a fantastic picture of a place and a time and a mode of entertainment. I liked it that Blanche hesitates before ordering fried chicken:

But what choice did she have? She didn’t want Thelvin to think she was too cute to eat with her fingers, and she was hungry.
I also enjoyed a sudden jump into British politics when, a propos of very little, Blanche thinks that

looking like a sweet old granny hadn’t stopped Margaret Thatcher from being vicious The crime plot was quite complex: it looked as though it was going to be fairly obvious, but Neely had some twists up her sleeve, and took me aback more than once.

The pictures (from the 1940s) are of a beer garden in Charlotte, North Carolina, and are from the NYPL. (Elsewhere they are described as being taken in Harlem, but I trust the NYPL…)

In a previous Labor Day entry I featured the enormous sculpture of a Hammering Man by Jonathan Borofsky, 48 feet tall, celebrating workers everywhere. He is outside the Seattle Art Museum, his arm "hammers" silently and smoothly four times per minute from 7 am to 8 pm every day, and it is a splendid sight. But he always has Labor Day off, so is immobile today.

Rereading Blanche Passes Go proved incredibly bittersweet. While I absolutely adored this fourth novel in the Blanche White mystery series, I was heartbroken knowing that it’s the last one. I read Blanche Passes Go when it was first published in 2000, I expected the fifth book in a couple of years’ time. But years — and then a decade — came and went, and still no Blanche book from author Barbara Neely.

So I’ve been terribly grateful to Brash Books for re-releasing the original four books in paperback and the Kindle format. They’re just as fresh, just as topical, just as sassy and funny and touching as they were in the 1990s.

In Blanche Passes Go, Blanche takes a leave from her new home in Boston to return to her sleepy hometown of Farleigh, N.C., which she fled at the end of the first book in the series, Blanche on the Lam. Blanche is full of hope about her homecoming, meeting a new man and anticipating helping her best friend Ardell with her new catering business. But poor Blanche can’t get a break! On her first night back in town, who should she run into but David Palmer? The white, entitled rich boy Palmer raped Blanche eight years ago. Faced with living in fear or getting her own back, longtime readers can guess what Blanche will do…. However, readers won’t come close to guessing the shocking ending or the many twists and turns Neely sprinkles throughout Blanche Passes Go.

Which brings us to the 15 years we readers have waited for the next chapter in Blanche’s life. Please, please, Professor Neely! We don’t want to bid goodbye to Blanche! You’ve said that you saw mystery novels as a great vehicle for discussing race, class, gender, and other social issues for new audiences. The need for that still exists today! Have pity on us, and grace us with another Blanche book!

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and Brash Books in exchange for an honest review.

Blanche Passes Go is another outstanding story by Barbara Neely. She tackles the world of bigotry head on and does not flinch. I enjoy her story telling style and the way the mystery (murder) is solved. This is the second Blanche White mystery book I have read and reviewed and they only get better.

I gave this a 4.5 star rating.

This is my second Blanche White book and I loved it as much as I did the other one. I love that Blance is an older woman . There are too few books written about older women in active lifestyles. Barbara Neely does an excellent job of doing this. This was a thought provoking and sometimes scary look into the South Blanche returned to. If you like mysteries and a book to make you think and feel, give this book a try. I received this book free from NetGalley for an honest review.

I really enjoy this series. Blanche White is not your typical sleuth and these are not your typical mysteries. This mystery finds Blanche returning to North Carolina to help Adele with her catering business. This one deals with the serious subject of Violence Against Women as Blanche confronts her own demons and tries to solve the murder of a local young girl. In the end the mystery is solved but Justice is not tied up in a neat bow. Even though this series was published in the 90s they do not feel dated. This is the last book in the series and I am disappointed that I will not find out what Blanche does next. I highly recommend this series and since Brash has made them available again there is not excuse not to read them. Enjoy

I have now read all of the Blanche series. The series gives a good view of the life of African American attitudes back in the fifties and sixties. As I grew up in the south during these times I can attest to the veracity of the author’s expressions. This was when segregation was in place and Blacks were not allowed into certain parts of town after evening hours. I really did not know prejudice at the time, it is just “the way it was”. But the series is not a primer on Black lives in America. It centers on a woman who is clever enough to do well for herself during these times. From problem solving to merely surviving in a white person’s world was only as easy as one was smart enough to outsmart the gossip and conniving of the people around her, both black and white. Back in those days we referred to them as Negroes, the term African American had not yet come into everyday vocabulary. Yes some people (many people) did use the currently derogatory word. Many of the Negroes referred to some of their kind using the currently derogatory word. But set all that aside and just focus on the story. An engaging series, enjoyable reading.