Detective novels and hiphop make an odd couple; you don’t hear a lot of shout-outs to the Hardy Boys from Ludacris, nor do you see Agatha Christie referencing the Digable Planets. Therefore, reading Norman Kelley’s A Phat Death is somewhat disconcerting. While it’s a mystery, it also occasionally feels like a polemic about hiphop, capitalism, and race.
The plot follows private investigator Nina Halligan as she investigates the death of rapper SugarDick. Was rap mogul Big Poppa Insane behind the hit, or was it the corporations that control the record industry (who also market to whites an MTV-friendly image of what Kelley dubs “niggacool”)?
The story has all the subtle intelligence of a Kid Rock single, and is lurchingly advanced by a procession of characters who enter the narrative, impart clues, then die. Those awkward mechanics aren’t helped by Kelley’s amateurish style, or by the fact that any characters who do live longer than three pages are annoying or uninteresting.
What is interesting is that Kelley uses his characters as mouthpieces for diatribes about hiphop in regards to black culture. While Kelley’s respect for hiphop is evident (if anachronistic) and he makes prescient points, his views can’t be taken seriously when he consistently shoves them aside for a mystery that even the Pam Grier-ish Nina doesn’t seem to give a shit about.
A Phat Death also marks an exception to that adage about judging a book by its cover. The book’s design is that of a hiphop album–complete with a parental advisory label, chapters labeled as “tracks,” and Kelley listed as producer. It’s an inane advertising ploy, but one indicative of the distressing sense that Kelley, despite his observations, has targeted his book at the same mainstream Americans whom he accuses of being responsible for the simultaneous success and corruption of most popular hiphop. If A Phat Death was entirely commentary, its cover might have been a clever, sarcastic jab–but since Kelley ultimately places more importance on writing a mediocre mystery, the whole thing feels like just another cog in the machine it professes to rail against. ERIK HENRIKSEN