Our Man in the Dark
A Novel
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- £0.99
Publisher Description
A stunning debut historical noir novel about a worker in the civil rights movement who became an informant for the FBI during the months leading up to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Feeling underappreciated and overlooked, John Estem, a bookkeeper for Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), steals ten thousand dollars from the organization. Originally planning to use the money to seed a new civil rights initiative in Chicago, he squanders the stolen funds.
To the bookkeeper’s dismay, the FBI has been keeping close tabs on Dr. King and his fellow activists—including Estem—for years. FBI agents tell Estem that it is his duty, as an American and as a civil rights supporter, to protect the SCLC from communist infiltration. The FBI offers Estem a stipend, but in case he has any thoughts about refusing the assignment, they also warn him that they know about the stolen money.
Playing informant empowers Estem, but he soon learns that his job is not simply to relay information on the organization. Once the FBI discovers evidence of King’s sexual infidelities, they set out to confirm the facts to undermine King’s credibility as a moral leader and bring down the movement. This timely novel comes in light of recent revelations that government informants had infiltrated numerous black movement organizations. With historical facts at the core of Our Man in the Dark, Harrison uses real life as a great inspiration for his drama-filled art.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Harrison's debut fuses fascinating history with a repellent protagonist and an implausible pulp plot. In 1964, John Estem is a bookkeeper at Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. With his leg in a brace from surviving polio, an unhealthy fixation on a nightclub singer, and a penchant for prostitutes, Estem's civil rights involvement is the only thing in his life that isn't lonely or fractured. When his idea for a march is scuttled, Estem embezzles $10,000 from the organization to fund the march himself, but squanders most of the money on clothes, women, and a Cadillac. In his compromised state, Estem is an easy mark for Mathis and Strobe, FBI agents who recruit him to inform on purported Communist infiltration of the SCLC. Estem takes a loan from "Count," an underworld nightclub owner and the possessive boyfriend of a singer Estem pines for, allowing Estem to maintain his duplicities for a time. But it soon becomes clear that the FBI wants to use information about Dr. King's personal life to discredit the civil rights movement, information Count is after as well for his own blackmail purposes, Estem turns the tables on his handlers. Harrison shows promise in his evocation of time and place, but Estem's transformation from spineless embezzler to ruthless, reckless survivor who can outwit the FBI is less successful. He comes across as unpleasant and unbalanced, and given that he never seems more than minutes ahead of being exposed, his gutsy maneuvering late in the book seems especially unlikely.
