Book Review: True-to-Life Depiction of Workers’ Collectivity

Most mysteries’ main characters are either a police detective or a private eye who works with the cops or a citizen who works closely with the police. Author Timothy Sheard has created a viable mystery with little or no police involvement, thus concretely illustrating how the working class itself can solve society’s problems. That’s what we get with the latest Lenny Moss mystery, Someone Has to Die.
The protagonist Lenny Moss is a maintenance worker in a hospital in Philadelphia. He is a union steward in his workplace, and is very active in defending the workers against management’s harassment and callousness. His commitment to his co-workers is genuine and is returned with deep friendships and mutual aid off the job. His anti racist principles and militant hatred for the bosses cement the friendships with his coworkers. Lenny Moss is nominally the detective, but five or six characters pool their information and put together enough pieces of the puzzle to solve the mystery.
The workers are portrayed realistically. They have good hearts and burn with righteous anger over injustice, but are not without human faults and failings. There are times when Lenny wants to just give up and lead a quiet life, but his sense of duty to his co-workers keeps him going. Lenny’s firm principles, which include multiracial unity and service towards the workers he represents, as well as his refusal to be intimidated by management, earns his coworkers’ trust. He is not a communist and there is no discussion of overthrowing capitalism, but Lenny understands that loyalty to the working class trumps personal gain.
This mystery begins with a nurse falsely accused and fired by the bosses when a patient is found dead in the morning. Scapegoating a worker as cover to make the hospital administration look good rather than trying to understand what actually happened rings true for workers in medicine, transit and education. Meanwhile, the hospital management plans to slash pensions and health care for retirees as well as current workers. Lenny and his union co-workers and retirees creatively plan a rally against these cutbacks while the union leadership negotiates with management. Lenny has his hands full as he tries to find out why the patient died, support the fired nurse, and outwit management.
Sheard shows his understanding of hospital practice and the need for teamwork in caring for patients in a secondary issue where a friendly doctor refuses to follow the computer guidelines in managing a sick patient despite intimidation from a manager who is heavily invested in the new and expensive technology.
This is the fifth in a series featuring Lenny Moss. The best part of this mystery series is that it is grounded in the working class. Lenny cannot solve mysteries without the collective efforts of clerks, lab techs, and clinicians. Sheard himself worked as an Emergency Room nurse for forty years. Lenny is based on a real janitor who was his coworker in a Philadelphia hospital. Tim started Hardball Press after his regular publishers told him they could not make any money selling his books. You can purchase this mystery novel at http://amzn.to/2hNApv3.
It is important to support books about strong, antiracist workers and their struggles. Otherwise, the stories would not be told and workers would not be inspired to action.