Robert Fleming’s new book Fever in the Blood shares many traits with his other published fiction, dominated by a deep concern for the emotional, societal, and communal afflictions endured by people of the African diaspora. Although many of the protagonists in his fiction are multi-faceted and morally complex, his new creation — Edward Michael Stevens, the protagonist of Fever in the Blood — will try many readers.
At once a victim and a villain, Eddie is not an easy character to read about. Righteous and rigid in his standards, he also rationalizes his actions. Because of the circumstances of his early life, he can hardly help what he does. Or can he? He has impulses that he feels he has no real control over. All this would make him just another wounded black person in the city.
But the problem with Eddie is that he’s a serial killer. Not good. Culturally informed, media-shrewd, angry with women, spiritually insightful and religious in his own way, the guy is as pitiful and as dangerous as they come.
When Eddie is rescued from his mother’s promiscuous ghetto life and his big-shot dope dealer father and placed in the home of his adoptive foster father, a Harlem Congressman, one would think that he has been plucked from the evil destiny, mental illness, and poverty that awaits many black youth. But Eddie, who knows that he should perhaps be back in the loony bin, knows better. The congressman is hypocritical, like so many do-gooders. Throwing a good deed at a problem is not going to so easily help the grief, emotional bereftness, and sorrows in the black community.
Politics and hypocritical religion affects everything as it has affected Eddie. In Eddie’s skewed vision, everything — from the kindness of one’s fellow man to the supposed justice of the legal system — is rife with calculation, prejudice, and evil. How can such a youth, affected by such realities of life, find truth? Can he define self-empowerment by crime against society and women?
Article comments
1 - Constance
oooh, good review. I've never read any of his stuff but I'm going to add him to my to read list.
2 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com. Nice work!