56 pages • 1 hour read
Rudolph FisherThe Conjure Man Dies: A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1932A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the study guide discusses drug and alcohol addictions, as well as domestic violence. The novel features portrayals of racial prejudice and discrimination. The novel also contains dialect commonly used in 1930s Harlem that may be considered stereotypical, insensitive, and/or offensive.
One night on a street in Harlem, a woman observes a group of people at Battery Park, taking in the music and joy around her. They’re listening to a popular song, with the lyrics, “I’ll be glad when you’re dead you rascal you” (3). Meanwhile, at 130th Street, a man rushes out of the building where undertaker Samuel Crouch and fortune teller N. Frimbo run their practices and tells the neighboring physician, Dr. John Archer, that something has happened to Frimbo. Dr. Archer goes with the man and his friend across the street to Frimbo’s practice. There, they find him sitting slumped and open-eyed. They carry him downstairs to the front room—Samuel Crouch’s funeral parlor—where Dr. Archer inspects him by palpating his chest and listening for any sounds. He realizes that Frimbo is dead and notices blood on his head, which leads him to believe that he was murdered.
He tells the two men, the first of whom introduces himself and his friend as clients Bubber Brown and Jinx Jenkins, to call the police. Jinx is hesitant and initially considers running away, but Bubba calls the police and tells them to come to the scene. Dr. Archer then tells Jinx that he and Bubber should stay there because running away will make the police suspect them. As they wait for the police, Bubba and Jinx wonder who killed Frimbo.
Chapter 2 Summary
Detective Perry Dart, one of the first Black detectives hired by the Harlem Police, is called to 130th Street after Bubber’s call. Dart interrogates Dr. Archer in Samuel Crouch’s front room while his men investigate Frimbo’s practice. Dart initially guesses that Frimbo’s head wound killed him, but Dr. Archer states that the wound is not severe enough and that Frimbo would have had to be struck with a heavy, blunt object and suffer a cerebral hemorrhage to die from such a wound. Dart suggests that Frimbo might have received the head wound after his death to make it appear that he died from that. He then tells Dr. Archer that they do not truly know if he was even killed and orders his men to call the precinct and send for the medical examiner and more men.
While they wait, Dr. Archer tells Dart that sometimes, smart people like them are dumb in these cases, over-guessing and over-complicating them rather than paying attention to simple observations. He says that he noticed Frimbo’s open mouth and hypothesizes that he had been choked to death and then hit in the head to keep him from resisting. Dr. Archer then inspects the inside of Frimbo’s mouth with a flashlight and, with his forceps, pulls out a handkerchief.
Chapter 3 Summary
Dart congratulates Dr. Archer on thinking to check Frimbo’s throat for the handkerchief after he says that many medical examiners overlook such well-hidden details. They conclude that Frimbo’s killer was skilled and decide to look for more clues at his practice across the street. Dart and Dr. Archer look inside his bedroom. They find photographs of women, and Dart guesses that he hates women. They also look in his closet and find neatly organized and highly masculine clothes. In the study, they find a bookcase full of books, and Dr. Archer notices a plaque on the wall revealing that Frimbo graduated from Harvard and that his full name is N’Gana Frimbo, indicating that he is from Africa. They also find philosophy books in his bookcase. These new facts raise questions about why he first chose Harvard and then fortune-telling. Dart decides to investigate the rest of the house for information about potential suspects.
Chapter 4 Summary
While Detective Dart and Dr. Archer search the other rooms, Bubber tells two women in the building about their discovery of Frimbo that night, and that he knew Frimbo was dead before he went to his practice. He states that while he is not superstitious, he saw a full moon with a skull in it. His grandmother taught him about moon signs, and seeing a moon with a skull meant the observer would witness three deaths.
Jinx dismisses Bubber’s theory on moon signs, saying that he has been drinking too much. They then begin insulting each other. Jinx jokes about having to blind Bubber so he cannot see the other two deaths, and Bubber challenges him to do so. Bubber tells Jinx that he is dumb, and Jinx calls him ugly. Bubber then insults his direct African heritage. The narrator explains that while Bubber and Jinx’s exchange appears vitriolic and hostile, it is a playful display of friendship.
Chapter 5 Summary
Detective Dart and Dr. Archer investigate the basement and cellar, which Samuel Crouch uses as a chapel. They find nothing noteworthy in those areas, so they decide to search the room where Dr. Archer, Bubber, and Jinx found the body. On the way, they meet the two women with whom Jinx and Bubber were speaking. Dr. Archer introduces the younger woman to Dart as Mrs. Martha Crouch. Dr. Archer confirms to them that Frimbo is dead, and Dart tells them that they can stay to help them solve the crime, to which the older woman protests.
Dart and Dr. Archer proceed to the crime scene and find a formidable African club resembling a human bone and skull. They both suspect that this club might be the weapon the killer used to strike Frimbo. They also check the walls and find a switch box, and Dart asks one of his men, Officer Brady, to get the extension light for further investigation. Across the hallway, they find a workbench with laboratory equipment. In a steel cabinet nearby, Dr. Archer finds, to his astonishment, a jar containing human testicles.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
Chapters 1 through 5 establish Frimbo as the victim of an apparent murder and Frimbo’s house as the setting for the murder. In addition, the chapters steadily show the weapons the killer used to attack and kill him: the white handkerchief and the African club. The set of chapters unveils the elaborate nature of the murder with these weapons and gives details hinting at Frimbo’s intellectual mind, like the Harvard diploma, and ties to his African background, such as the club and the jar of testicles in his laboratory.
The blood on the corpse’s head introduces blood as a symbol that represents the inability to hide the full truth. While the handkerchief initially remains hidden in Frimbo’s throat, blood presents the fact that the crime occurred.
Chapter 1 introduces the song motif “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You” (3) which fleshes out the setting by using jazz music that was popular in the Harlem Renaissance. The motif also emphasizes Jealousy as a Motive to Commit Murder, especially with the lyric “What is it that you’ve got/makes my wife feel so hot?” (3). This foreshadows the later unveiling of Samuel Crouch as Frimbo’s killer following Frimbo’s affair with his wife, Martha Crouch. The juxtaposition between the lively scene and the song’s dark lyrics establishes narrative tension. This tension is amplified through a second juxtaposition between this lively scene and the following one in which Frimbo’s body is uncovered.
Chapter 2 introduces Detective Dart as a character and shows his cool temperament and logical thinking, which contrast against his confusion later in the novel when the case becomes stranger. The chapter also shows Dr. Archer exhibiting his medical knowledge and establishes him as an excellent observer of details that many other doctors easily overlook. For example, he detects and pulls out the handkerchief from deep in Frimbo’s throat, and Dart compliments him, calling him a “smart boy” (17). Dr. Archer’s skills, even in the first few chapters, show that he is exceptional among physicians, and Dart works with him for this reason.
The darkness of Frimbo’s house symbolizes both Frimbo’s desire for secrecy and the killer’s desire to obscure the truth from the police or anyone else. Detective Dart and his men use the extension light to find the evidence and catch the killer, with the extension light symbolizing Dart’s search for the truth. The darkness and light in these chapters thus highlight The Concealment of One’s Self and Intentions.
Chapter 3 introduces the theme of Science and Rationality Versus Mysticism and Superstition with the revelation of Frimbo’s Harvard education and philosophy books, which seem to conflict with his role as a psychic. Detective Dart and Dr. Archer cannot understand why fortune-telling would appeal to an educated man like Frimbo. Dr. Archer guesses that Frimbo saw fortune-telling as a “better racket than medicine in this community. A really clever chap could do wonders” (21). Dr. Archer’s guess indicates that he and Dart see science and mysticism as binaries that contradict each other, a point of view that reflects the negative stereotypes that Western society has of spiritual workers. Frimbo’s depiction in later chapters subverts these ideas.
This conflict between science and mysticism also appears in Chapter 4 during Bubber and Jinx’s dispute. Bubber says that he saw a cloud move in front of the moon that took the form of a human skull. He believes in moon signs, a superstition he learned from his grandmother. According to him, moon signs are good or bad omens that predict the observer’s future. The skull moon, or “Death on the Moon” is the worst sign of all, predicting that the observer will see three deaths (24). Though he says he is not superstitious, he genuinely believes that moon signs are accurate predictors of future events, saying they have “never been known to fail” (24). Bubber’s openness to mystical phenomena shows that even though he favors science over superstition, he will not completely dismiss the possibility of mystical or supernatural phenomena, especially if it appears likely. His belief in moon signs also foreshadows his acceptance of Frimbo’s apparent revival and his story that he was truly dead and came back to life. Jinx, however, dismisses the idea of moon signs and remarks that Bubber drank too much “moonshine” (24). The two friends have contradictory beliefs, highlighting Fisher’s goal to depict well-rounded Black characters. This was characteristic of Harlem Renaissance works as Black authors worked against the flat depictions of Black people seen in many books by white authors.
Chapter 4 also establishes Bubber and Jinx’s vitriolic banter. The two frequently exchange insults, many of them offensive and mocking their ancestors. The narrator assures the reader, however, that Bubber and Jinx “concealed the most genuine affection for each other” and that their antagonism is not real (25). The statement of Bubber and Jinx’s true sentiments foreshadows the betrayal Jinx feels when Bubber tries to downplay their friendship later in the novel, as well as the detective work Bubber does to free Jinx when he is jailed for the murder. This narrative aside also hints that things in this novel are not what they seem, a common element of detective fiction.
In introducing the crime, main characters, and key themes, these chapters establish the investigation into Frimbo’s murder as the main conflict. Moreover, they show the complexity of the murder case at the beginning, foreshadowing the unlikely revelations that emerge later in the novel.
