The Last King: A Maceo Redfield Novel (Strivers Row) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "The sky above the Bay Bridge was a gunmetal gray, and in the distance I could hear the low rumble of freight trains that ran..." (more)
Key Phrases: Daddy Al, San Francisco, Black Jeff (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post

Great crime protagonists all have at least one thing in common: They are pure products of their gritty environments. There's a palpable sense of place in Sam Spade's San Francisco, Philip Marlowe's L.A. and the Detroit populated by the laconic bottom-feeders in Elmore Leonard's books; you sense it both in what their narrators say and what they don't. They live here, and we find ourselves trusting their native sense of what's up and who's down almost from page one.

Nichelle D. Tramble's Maceo Redfield is a different case. He has a great territory -- the drug-infested 1989 battleground of Oakland, Calif. -- but he's an earnest and awkward tour guide.

When Tramble first introduced readers to Maceo in her 2001 debut, The Dying Ground, she staked out his terrain as a place where good and evil are very much a matter of scale. Maceo, whose parents are both dead, has been raised by his loving and responsible grandfather, Daddy Al, who hasn't been above committing murder himself. Maceo's lifelong best friends are Billy and Holly, both dope dealers. Holly was also raised by Daddy Al, and he and Maceo consider themselves brothers, even though they have taken very different paths. A former high school baseball star, Maceo finds himself sucked into the city's ongoing drug battle when he returns home on a break from UC-Berkeley to find Billy dead and Billy's girlfriend, Felicia, suspiciously on the lam. Maceo and Holly go on a hunt for Felicia that will end in a blaze of gunfire and then an actual blaze to burn the bodies.

For all the blood and brutality, The Dying Ground talks a lot tougher than it actually is. Maceo's insights about life in this hard land are milky and banal, and you never get the feeling he's walked the mean streets Tramble keeps shoving him down.

Maceo's back for the sequel, The Last King, and although he's acquired a scar, a big dog and a smoking habit, I'm afraid he hasn't changed a bit. The plot, involving an unsolved death and a missing suspect, looks a little familiar as well.

It is two years later. Maceo and Felicia have gone their separate ways, although everyone in town seems to think they went off together. Holly has stayed put, expanding his domain by taking over the late Billy's drug turf. Maceo, who has been rambling around the country trying to forget everything that happened to him, returns to Oakland after learning that Holly is in trouble. A woman has been found bludgeoned to death in the hotel room of an NBA superstar named Cotton Knox, another orphan of the storm raised by Daddy Al (who sometimes seems to have raised half of Oakland); Holly is suspected and has gone into hiding.

As Maceo tries to find Holly, he learns that the dead woman was part of a stable of high-rolling call girls operated by a thug named Dutch, who is apparently looking to avenge the death of his cousin Smokey, a fat drug lord whom we last saw when Felicia blew his head off in the last pages of the previous book. Maceo's search for the truth about the woman's death takes him into the pampered world of Cotton, his supposedly long-suffering wife, Allaina, and their hangers-on. His romantic interest along the way is supplied by Sonia "Sonny" Boston, a femme who may or may not be fatale.

Tramble writes with a seriousness of mind and heart, and she convincingly renders the mixture of these high and low worlds, sports celebrity and the drug trade, in a story that involves both blackmail and the bonds of friendship. There's no juice or vitality to it, however; Maceo is as much a stiff as always, and his occasional tendency to serve as a mouthpiece for Tramble's liberal pieties only compounds the problem. "The kids left behind by the absence of resources flowed into the streets and turned Oakland into a devil's playground," he moans. "Who knew from The Cosby Show that we were in distress?"

Maceo is also entirely too quick with portentous, melodramatic lectures on the human toll of drugs and the collective guilt of all those involved: "We'd contributed through blindness, bullets, and greed to the circus act of Oakland crimes, and even if we tendered our payment in flesh and blood it would never be enough." The story is clotted with lumpy sociological commentary, stiffly journalistic observations and a plethora of annoying moments that tell more than they show.

Everything Maceo says about the city where he has lived his entire life sounds as new to him as it does to us; there's nothing offhand, casual or convincing about him. He's just the kind of narrator, in other words, who stands in the way of our enjoying what should be a fast, sweaty, heart-pounding read.

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist

Tramble follows The Dying Ground (2001) with another Maceo Redfield mystery. After two years, Maceo returns to Oakland at the urging of his aunt Cissy. Basketball star and childhood friend Cotton has been arrested for murder after a dead woman was found in his hotel room. Maceo agrees to investigate in order to help his best friend and Cissy's former lover, Jonathon "Holly" Ford. Drugs, violence, and the world of professional sports all come together in this high-energy account of what happens when the kings and queens of the streets put their cards on the table. Maceo quickly discovers that he can't trust the people he knows, and he has to trust those he doesn't know. In true Donald Goines fashion, Tramble tells her own story about loyalty and betrayal in the urban streets. Lillian Lewis
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: One World/Strivers Row (June 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375758828
• ISBN-13: 978-0375758829
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #794,420 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Maceo is not that interesting. Holly should be the focus!, August 27, 2004

By	Prometheus (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

I read "The Dying Ground" several years ago and while I thought that book was fair, "The Last King" isn't much better. In fact, it's less of a novel than the first one and by no means is it a hip-hop mystery. Everything happens around Maceo; he's not a catalyst for anything; he's not involved in what's going on. In reality, he's a peripheral character and we're waiting for Holly to appear and move the story forward. For the life of me I can't understand why Holly isn't front and center. If the goal is to show crime, broken dreams, survival, noirish elements, etc. in Oakland, Maceo is, indeed, the wrong character to use as the mouthpiece. Holly, at least what we get of him, is the central character to express those images. Maceo is an observer to the action and not really part of the fabric of what's going on.

There is a way to blend social commentary and action within a story, but it's not in evidence here. Maceo often sounds like a sociologist/observer rather than someone who's lived in Oakland; nothing he says sounds as though he really lived there. His musings about his childhood don't ring true; I don't/didn't get a sense he and Holly were ever really close; and ditto for the Cotton character. And all that background noise on the inter-relationships: It seems Daddy Al is related to EVERYONE in Oakland or had some significant input into how they turned out. It all seems "made up" to fit the tone of the story. One of my pet peeves about the current novel: the element of time. Maceo is introduced as being gone for two years. If you do the math and follow the timeline, he did a LOT of stuff in those two years and it all seems improbable given his character. He's just not the type to have a bar fight in Texas.

As a mystery, it doesn't work. Once the love interest/femme fatale character was introduced, it wasn't too hard to figure out the rest. I thought there might be a "surprise" ending, but there wasn't. I can only assume the Ms. Tramble will eventually turn her attention to Holly or Felicia because it's unlikely Maceo would be an interesting subject in a third novel. He's pretty boring and I think she's hit a brick wall with this character.

Not to diss Ms. Tramble (and the editorial above trumps my review), but I laughed out loud when I read the following: "The kids left behind by the absence of resources flowed into the streets and turned Oakland into a devil's playground. Who knew from The Cosby Show that we were in distress?" There are other internal monologues Maceo bemoans and I found myself wondering if she was reaching for "great literature." I know she can probably do it, but this definitely is not the novel.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Strong Storytelling....(3.5 Stars), February 1, 2005

By	Phyllis Rhodes (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Last King is Nichelle Tramble's follow-up to her debut novel, The Dying Ground, which unfortunately I have not read. However, the author provided enough background to establish the history and torment of the novel's hero, Maceo Redfield, with little redundancy. The Last King opens with Maceo returning from a two-year self-exile to help childhood friends and foster brothers Cotton, the professional basketball player and Holly, a local Oakland gangster. Both men are wanted for questioning in the murder of a high-priced call girl in a posh hotel room rented by Cotton. With Cotton being a star NBA player, a media scandal is brewing. Maceo's instinct is to protect his family at all costs and mend the broken relationships and open wounds suffered in the aftermath of The Dying Ground events.

We follow Maceo into Oakland's seedy underworld: the docks, dirty hole-in-the-wall diners, and crack houses. Tramble writes with familiarity of the city - vivid descriptions and imagery, local political challenges and social ills of the late 1980's and early 1990's resonate throughout the novel. The major drawback of the book is Maceo being in reactive mode during most of the novel. He is no super-sleuth and seems a bit too trusting of strangers (perhaps that's supposed to be part of his charm). He does not appear to have a clear strategy on how to resolve the murder except to find Holly - which largely involves collecting clues by visiting old haunts and sleazy contacts. He seems to accidentally discover who the real murderer is - which wasn't too difficult for the reader to figure out early on - I kept reading to figure how it was done. Nonetheless what was lacking in the mystery/suspense aspect, Tramble makes up for in creating colorful characters, insightful societal commentaries/observations , and a couple of unforeseen revelations in the end.

Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub, The Nubian Circle Book Club

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 5 Stars For The Last King!!!!, July 2, 2004

By A Customer

I, along with my previous reviewers, agree that Ms. Tramble has done a wonderful job with The Last King as a sequel to The Dying Ground. I came upon The Dying Groud by accident and discovered a treasure.

In The Last King we are reunited with Maceo Redfield who has grown as a man. His exterior is tougher but you still feel his vulnerabilities that lie beneath the surface. I really enjoyed revisiting old characters as well as being introduced to new ones. I feel like I know these people and will readily admit that I missed Daddy Al, Gra'mere, and the aunts being more involved in this sequel but I understand their absence. This novel to me was more about Maceo coming to grips with past actions that deeply affected his friends and family. I'm sure his family will play a more prominent role in future novels.

Ms. Tramble has not lost her "pitching arm" in continuing to describe the city of Oakland at the time period that this novel is placed. In reading the descriptions of the city and it's surroundings you feel like you're riding along in the truck with Maceo and Kiros.

If you haven't already had the pleasure of experiencing this author's writing and enjoy books that make you feel for the characters, please start with The Dying Ground. After you have taken that book trip continue on your journey with The Last King. You will not be disappointed.

Hats off to you Ms. Tramble. The Last King was worth the wait and I look forward to the next novel in this series. May you have continued success.