Murder Minneapolis Style, review, Hugh Blanton
Murderapolis
Anthony Neil Smith
Urban Pigs Press
12.99
On January 9, 1925 the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder ran a story under this headline: "Minneapolis Faces Rising Homicide Rates Amid National Decline." In 2024 the US homicide rate had fallen approximately 16%, marking a return to pre-pandemic levels. However, in Minneapolis there were 76 homicides in 2024, up from 72 in 2023, making its homicide rate more than triple the national level. Among Minneapolis homicides for which the age of the offender was known, about 10% were committed by children under the ago of 18 and about 40% by those under 24. The age group of the killers isn't too much of a surprise—it's not like geriatrics would be out running around committing murders, right? However, a Brookings Institution report in December of 2024 found that the homicide increases that had been recorded in 2020 were "directly connected to local unemployment and school closures in low-income areas." Also, more than half of Minneapolis school students are chronically absent from class, meaning they miss 10% or more of the school year. Youth gang problems? Minneapolis has them.
Murderapolis is the latest novel from Anthony Neil Smith. Roble Engstrom and John Blitzen are two teachers at Northside High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota—Roble an English Lit teacher and John a physical education teacher and coach. Roble's fairly new, John's a grizzled veteran. The school's got a gang problem; students disrupting classes and high absenteeism. A dope dealer regularly parks his tricked out Chrysler 300 behind the school and does a brisk business. The school's staff are too afraid to confront him or call the police. Roble, the new teacher in the school, had been unaware of the dope dealer. When he finds out about it, he's shocked. His students are shocked too—at their teacher's naivety. Roble decides the next time the dope dealer visits, he will confront him.
Roble Engstrom is a Somali born orphan—he was adopted and raised in Minnesota by an upper-middle class white couple, Loeb and Ginger Engstrom. His manner of speaking (he speaks with a Minnesota accent) and dress makes him something of an outsider to the Somali community, even though he is married to Fadumo who comes from a Somali family. They have a son Michael, four, and Fadumo is pregnant with their next child. Roble is studying for a degree so he can find a better place to work than gang-infested Northside High School. He also aspires to be a science fiction novelist (that's in fact how he and Fadumo met—a scifi convention):
"He’d applied for the job at Northside because he’d applied to nearly everything. Luckily, they were looking for someone like Roble. A new teacher who was excited, full of ideas, and had a lot of energy they could take advantage of and work him to death, pouring all his potential down the drain. He felt as if his entire job was about failure. The best he could do on any day was fail better. So he needed something other than teaching to keep him from losing his soul."He and Fadumo have been married seven years. Fadumo's father is losing patience with his low-wage earning son-in-law.
John Blitzen is sixty-two years old, but still has the physique of a boxer. Ex-Navy, ex-cop, he stays in shape. The students call him Captain Karate, or at least used to. When he first began teaching at Northside fifteen years ago he struck terror into the hearts of the gangsters and punks that stalked the halls, but now he's tired. He's aware of the Chrysler 300 that shows up almost daily on school grounds and the steady procession of students making their way out to it for their fixes. Years ago he would have confronted him, maybe even yank him out of the car for a good beatdown. Blitzen is in fact just standing at a window looking at the dope dealer's car one day when he sees another teacher striding out to it to do what somebody should have already done. It's the new guy: the skinny and timid Mr. Engstrom. What the hell does he think he's doing?
At 372 pages, Murderapolis runs a little long, but Smith makes a good case for it. Smith is a Professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University and runs the NOIR IS NOW Substack. He took the title for this novel from a New York Times story in 1995 about homicides in Minneapolis jumping from 60 in 1994 to 97 in 1995 that dubbed Minneapolis "Murderapolis." Smith is also the author of the Billy Lafitte series about a cop gone bad who gets kicked off the Gulfport, Mississippi police force and takes his unique methods of law enforcement to other jusrisdictions. Smith has a thing for bad cops— detective Mika Feist in Murderapolis is taking payoffs from multiple gangs, including the one that sends the dealer to Northside High School.
When Roble approached the man in the Chrysler 300 he didn't know exactly what he was going to say or do, so he stuck out his hand and introduced himself. The dope dealer's name is Morris Day and if that name sounds familiar it's because Morris Day was a character in the movie Purple Rain. (His real name is Albert Albright and he's a Prince fan.) After a short conversation between the two, Morris starts his car and leaves. Roble is something of a hero after that—no one had ever confronted the dope dealer before. However, not long afterward a student dies of a heroin overdose while in class. When the Chrysler 300 appears on school grounds again, Roble takes a baseball bat to it, smashing it up while Blitzen holds Morris in a bear hug. The teachers' rage, however, didn't account for gang retaliation.
Both of them are targets now. And so is Roble's family.
Murderapolis is not fast paced, but it never lets the reader go. Smith goes into the details of gang loyalties, betrayals, and politics. How it is that good cops go bad. The internal struggles a drug addict goes through. How deeply gang tentacles worm their way into our communities (the school dope dealer's gang has more than just the cop in their pocket). The twists in Murderapolis are completely unexpected, the climactic ending terrifying. Smith even gives us a little education on Somali immigrant culture. I can't help but wonder if Smith's going to give us a Roble Engstrom series to go along with our Billy Lafitte series. One can only hope.
Comments
Post a Comment