Blanche on the Lam

Blanche on the Lam

Dust-jacket illustration of the first U.S. edition
Author	Barbara Neely
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Detective fiction
Publisher	St. Martin's Press
Publication date	1992
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	180 pp (first edition, hardcover)
ISBN
Followed by	Blanche among the Talented Tenth

Blanche on the Lam is a mystery novel by author Barbara Neely. Blanche on the Lam is the first in a series by Barbara Neely. This novel brings to light the intelligence and power of an African-America domestic female worker in the midst of a racist and sexist society. The book won the Agatha Award and the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, and the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery. The series continues with Blanche among the Talented Tenth (1994), Blanche Cleans Up (1998), and Blanche Passes Go (2000).

Throughout European and American history, upper class and upper-middle-class families had a prevailing attitude of ignoring their servants until they were needed for labor. Servants were expected to be silent and they had little opportunity to report criminal behavior within their own living/work environment. The American system of slavery, even in the post-emancipation era, took expectations of invisibility and powerlessness of servants to the extreme. Enslaved Africans found themselves in a position in which they were left to deal, without support of the law or society, the immoral slavery in the United States.Thus, due to lack of food and no pay, servants would often resort to petty theft. After enslaved blacks were emancipated, they made efforts to move beyond domestic work and manual labor, but many came to the realization that the only work available to them was domestic work or manual labor (both positions paid very little). Barbara Neely draws upon these societal oppressions to be the foundation of Blanche on the Lam.

Blanche on the Lam opens in a court room with Blanche being accused of writing bad checks and being sentenced to thirty days in jail to teach her a lesson. She has a small panic attack at the thought of having to spend thirty days in a small jail cell and asks to use the rest room where she ends up fuming over what has become of her life in Farleigh, North Carolina since moving there from New York city. She gave up better pay for the safety of her children and ended being unable to cover the checks she wrote, being accused of writing more bad checks than she had, and being sentenced to time in jail because of it.