Goodbye, Mr. Shaft

Shaft #5

by Ernest Tidyman, Phillip Rock (Manuscript)

Shaft goes to London, and Big Ben tolls for the spivs and smarmy villains of the London underworld. It's as dark and dirty down there as it is in the nether regions of Times Square, where the big black private eye usually enforces his kill-or-be-killed code for survival. He's there to guard the two small sons of an important American black political figure, who are the prizes in a kidnapping caper masterminded by a neo-fascistic American zillionaire. The bodies and the dolly birds pile up like hot crumpets at high tea when he discovers that all is not square in Piccadilly and in the sudden-death alleys of Soho. It's a long way from Harlem to Haymarket but the indomitable Shaft makes the leap with his customary steel-spring ease- and almost comes home in a basket.

186 pages, Hardcover

First published December 28, 1973

About the author

Ernest Ralph Tidyman took his first breath on Jan. 1, 1928, the son of a veteran police reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. At age 14, he dropped out of school and, concealing his youth, won his own police-reporting gig with the rival Cleveland News. Following a two-year stint in the U.S. Army, Tidyman returned to Cleveland and worked as an editor for The Plain Dealer before moving to such dailies as the New York Post and The New York Times.

Ernest Tidyman is best known for his novels featuring the African-American detective John Shaft. He also co-wrote the screenplay for the film versions of Shaft and The French Connection. Tidyman was awarded an Academy Award for his screenplay adaptation of The French Connection.

Reviews

[Russell Horton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clever title within an interesting series with a memorable main character.

[Edward Erdelac · Rating 4 out of 5]

The black senator from Shaft Has A Ball returns, this time faced with an unprecedented vice-Presidential run. Threatened by white supremacists and fearing for the lives of his two sons Reggie and Barnaby, he asks John to take the boys to London, where some low lifes in the English underworld with a seedy interest in keeping a black man out of the top two spot in America plot to kidnap them.

The change of scenery suits the character. Shaft has to navigate the London underground unarmed and gets put through the wringer a couple times. The interactions between him and the two kids are brief but great, especially when, to keep a closer eye on them, he volunteers to teach a lot of posh British schoolboys judo and winds up charming a Duchess and one of the teachers.

This moves quickly and has some neat writing in it as expected from the other Tidyman novels (there's a line about equating the clicking of switchblades to the only crickets heard in Harlem I liked). Feels just a little hurried at the end, with a subplot of an inside man on the kidnapping not really paying off too well. Still a good read.

[Steve Aldous · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fifth in the Shaft series and third to be published in hardback. This takes a departure from the series' New York setting by having a kidnap plot set in and around London. Shaft is hired by Senator Stovall as protection for his two kids. Unknown to Shaft, the kidnappers have a man on the inside. Nice to see Shaft duel with the London police and villains. Tidyman shows us the flawed selfish side of his hero, but also the determination for him to right his wrongs.