1,001 Novels: A Library of America
The Gone Dead (2019)
by Chanelle Benz
Money Road, Greenwood Mississippi
Mississippi: 5/18
It isn't often that the titles on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America raise questions about the role of authenticity in fiction, but such was the case for The Gone Dead, by British American author Chanelle Benz. The plot concerns the interracial daughter of a dead-before-his-time African American poet (her father) and what can only be described as her severely misguided attempt to "get to the bottom" of the "mysterious" circumstances surrounding the death of her father.
Clearly, the protagonist has not read the same books I have about this part of the country because it is just about 100 percent clear that any "mysterious" death of an African American man in the deep South is caused by white racists who are then protected by the local law enforcement and political establishment. I could have told this lady that in a five-minute conversation over a cup of coffee. Fair to say that I didn't linger on The Gone Dead, because reader I knew where this was headed. It was either the cops, friends of the cops or the cops when they were off duty that killed your daddy and you don't need 283 pages to tell the story.
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