SMFS list member Gary Phillips’s new book, Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem is out now. Published by Agora Books, the read is available in both print and eBook formats from the publisher, Amazon, and other vendors.
Synopsis:
MATTHEW HENSON AND THE ICE TEMPLE OF HARLEM is the first in
a new exciting retro rollicking adventure series. This re-imagined pulp novel
follows the Doc Savage-style adventures of the first black man to reach the
North Pole —Matthew Henson.
The tail end of the Roaring 20s. Harlem. Hired by
controversial spiritual leader Daddy Paradise to retrieve his adult daughter
who has been kidnapped, adventurer Matthew Henson does just that. Then he must
safeguard the two until the firebrand can deliver a momentous speech at a mass
rally. Henson must employ all his survival skills to fulfill his task—skills
that kept him whole in forbidden jungles, across Asia, and in sub-zero ice
storms when he first reached the North Pole.
Henson’s charge brings him face-to-face with such
illustrious characters as gangster Dutch Schultz, who's looking to muscle out
numbers racket boss Queenie St. Clair, and famed inventor Nikola Tesla who is
using his electrical acumen to surveil plutocrats. Henson’s pal Bessie Coleman,
America’s first black aviatrix lends a hand as well. With a death ray zeroing
in on him, he races against the clock to save lives, and keep a mysterious and
powerful meteor fragment he brought back from the Arctic years ago out of the
hands of monied evil-doers.
Set against the intellectual, artistic and political
firmament that was the Harlem Renaissance, THE ICE TEMPLE OF HARLEM re-imagines
explorer Matthew Henson in the style of Doc Savage and Indiana Jones. The one
the Inuit adopted as their own and considered the best example of those from
the distant South.
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