Blanche Cleans Up [Hardcover]

Barbara Neely (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1998

Tart-tongued and shrewd--with a keen nose for trouble--Blanche is unique in the field of amateur sleuths: a queen-sized, middle-aged black woman rooted in working-class America. Blanche sees at a glance what people, and society, are up to--especially if it's criminal. This time, she's filling in as cook-housekeeper to a Boston Brahmin politician and his venal wife when she becomes enmeshed in a festering canker of a scandal that moves from the Brindles' house in Brookline (a.k.a Prozac House) to the center of her own black community in Roxbury. Hot on the trail, she encounters a love triangle with bent angles, teen pregnancy, phony spirituality, and at least one person who doesn't mean her any good. In Blanche, BarbaraNeely has created a heroine to cheer for--and Blanche Cleans Up is a novel that will thrill not only her ardent fans and other mystery buffs, but also mainstream readers eager to explore a new neighborhood with a feisty, funny black woman as their guide.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Blanche White--she does not brook snide comments about her name--is definitely the working woman's heroine, and the only thing that is domesticated about her is the work she does. Queen-sized, sensible about her own dignity and that of others, Blanche can read the Boston homes she cleans like the open books they are. But when she pinch-hits for the cook of a local politico's family, she sees Mr. Brindle's wife's brittle sorrow and a son's estrangement. When the cook's son is killed, and other deaths follow in Blanche's Roxbury neighborhood, the strands connecting them lead back to the Brindles' house. Blanche does her work and methodically goes about resolving what turns out to be several murders tied to scandal, sex, and heartbreak. She does it all while raising her teenage niece and nephew as her own, trying to keep their hopes and their future safe. Blanche's voice is sassy and sexy, and her take on urban life through African American eyes is blade-sharp and sometimes as cutting. GraceAnne A. DeCandido

From Kirkus Reviews

Good thing Blanche White's housekeeping stint for right-wing gubernatorial hopeful Allister Brindle (a would-be politician who doesn't know anything about the Massachusetts electorate) is only temporary. Blanche, not one to suffer fools gladly, has already stuck her sharp elbow into visiting Rev. Maurice Samuelson's rib after hearing his perfidious promise to deliver the Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimas in his flock to Brindle, and she's connived with Ray-Ray Brown, the unwelcome son of the Brindles' regular housekeeper, to keep quiet about a menacing note he's delivered to Brindle. But Blanche's position in the household is still more secure than that of Felicia Brindle's sculpted personal trainer, Saxe Winton, or of Ray-Ray himself. Both of them are murdered, with more corpses still in the offing, as Brindle and his cohorts work themselves into a frenzy over a compromising videotape unlikely to endear him to the conservative voters he's counting on. It's a case that plays beautifully to the strengths Blanche showed in her first two novels (Blanche Among the Talented Tenth, 1994, etc.): poking around, getting underfoot, and displaying maximum attitude as she solves the tiny mystery en route to sticking it to the Man. The title says it all. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (April 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670876267
• ISBN-13: 978-0670876266
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #105,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Real woman, strong plot, politically relevant. Great book!, July 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Blanche Cleans Up (Hardcover)

After reading BLANCHE CLEANS UP, I went right back and re-read all of the "Blanches"--BLANCHE ON THE LAM, BLANCHE AND THE TALENTED TENTH, and BLANCHE CLEANS UP. I tried to keep track of all of the things I liked, but I got tired of making notes and folding back the pages. So I'm just going with what I remember.

I'm even more in awe now than I was the first time I read the books. Reading them all in a row, back to back, delivers even more of a wallop. The deftness with which Neely wove in the politics of race, class, color and hair, gender, homophobia, patriarchy, marital status, abuse, criminal justice is awesome. It is the same skill with which she incorporated sometimes subtle references to big city life at it's best--the politics of politics.

Blanche is confident and opinionated without being preachy. She knows how to punch somebody in the belly without looking like that's what she's doing. Thank God, though, she also knows how to punch 'em in the gut for real when the situation demands it.

I love the fact that Neely created a black hard-working woman character with dignity. The fact that she's sexual without being a hootchie momma and has a sense of justice that also allows her to retain enough smarts to run from the cops when she needs to. She's a sista with uncommon sense and balance.

Blanche is compassionate without being the least bit interested in cradling her employers' heads upon her breast, though she takes care to earn every penny they pay her by stirring up a whole range of heart-healthy food and straightening up behind them.

No smarmy music, no rose-colored glasses, no moist-eyed fantasy about what it means to have children in her life, either. Before she faced up to her obligation to family and her sister's children, Blanche ran away and gave herself time and space to think. Accepting responsibility for her niece and nephew was a matter of choice, not simply one of blood.

The way Blanche deals with her own and her niece's issues around class and color is both ! poignant and sure-footed. Without berating the girl or beating her about the head and shoulders for reflecting relentless dominant cultural influences, Blanche bides her time, guiding and helping the child to see the error of her ways and, more importantly, healthy options.

As the daughter of a domestic worker, raised by my mom in the projects in the 50s and 60s of the segregated south, and having experienced very early and firsthand the scorn of bourgeois black folk and white folk up and down the economic ladder, I'm ecstatic and in awe that Neely has done something quite revolutionary: She has given us a bright-colors-wearin', eggplant-black, size sixteen sista with a head full of natural hair and a sense of entitlement to match it all. At last, at last.

In a literary world where women authors of color still create main characters who look nothing like their African selves; in a music world where pop stars croon to video stars who look nothing like any woman in their family; in a glamour industry where ethnic clones of Barbie still rule, what a daring and refreshing change.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Delicious, August 9, 2000

By 

Lev Raphael - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blanche Cleans Up (Paperback)

Barbara Neely made a tremendous splash in the mystery world a few years ago with her debut novel Blanche on the Lam. Though the mystery itself was weak, many readers fell in love with the main character. Blanche White wasn't like most other feisty feminist women sleuths: she was African-American, middle-aged, and a cleaning woman. From the vantage point of her class, her race, and her background, Blanche's observations about people and life were both pointed and highly entertaining. Small wonder, then, that Neely won two fan-based mystery prizes.

Unapologetically heavyset Blanche is a delightful change from the trim, caustic sleuths who are always jogging and taking self-defense classes to stay in shape. She has a mouth on her and doesn't put up with anyone's bull, but her real skills are insight into people and places and the connections between them, and a kind of intuition verging on ESP. Though Blanche has "done more work than she'd been paid for in her life," working in other people's homes has helped her raise her dead sister's two children and taught her a great deal about psychology.

Blanche isn't just insightful, however: she's industrial strength nosey and proud of it. Finding out everything she can about her employers isn't any different than helping solve murders. "She liked sticking her nose in where it wasn't supposed to be and finding out things other people didn't want her to know. She liked doing this the way some people liked jogging or dancing or going to the mall."

In her third foray into crime-solving, Blanche lands right in the middle of a potential political scandal working as a fill-in housekeeper-cook for a wealthy but unhappy Boston couple. They rouse her curiosity and ire: the wife's too dazed and troubled, the husband's a right-wing Republican running for Governor whose bigoted courting of prominent right-wing African-Americans infuriates Blanche.

Something is definitely wrong in this house, and it unexpectedly explodes in Blanche's face, bringing violence to her Roxbury neighborhood and threatening herself and her children. Her strong connections to the African-American community will help her save herself and those she loves, as well as bring some unexpected justice.

Though fairly predictable, Blanche on the Lam is a classic cozy in form: low on violence, high on humor, charm, and quirkiness. It's likely to expand Neely's audience primarily because Blanche is such a delightful, richly-drawn character. Blanche is human, warm, saucy, funny and believable as she struggles in herself or in her community with racism, child rearing, teen pregnancy, homesickness, self-hatred, romantic loneliness and even menopause. While Neely still doesn't write much of a mystery, the meal she lays out for you here is so tasty that it really doesn't much matter.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BarbaraNeely has done it again!, July 24, 2002

By 

Toni (Mississippi) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blanche Cleans Up (Paperback)

I am a 20 year old, African American college student and I work at a public library in Mississippi. While shelving books one day I saw "Blanche Cleans Up." This was rare to me because I very seldom see books by African Americans at this library, so I decided to read this one. I couldn't put it down! This book was awesome! I loved the way the author used politics and racial issues that almost all African Americans can relate to. After reading "Blanche Cleans Up," I read the two previous books in the series ("Blanche on the Lam" and "Blanche Among the Talented Tenth") and needlees to say, the were also great. I look forward to reading "Blanche Passes Go."

Keep up the good work Ms. Neely!

--Toni