Lord of the Dark Places

A detective story, a black comedy, a tragedy, and thirty years out of print, it's a dissertation on history/stereotypes that man/unman black Americans.

"Lord of Dark Places is Hal Bennett's signature . . . It is a powerful, aesthetically satisfying, tightly controlled novel possessed of a plot that fairly explodes with incident and invention . . . Eclectic to an extreme—part satire, myth, blues, bildungsroman, detective thriller, social commentary, parable, and, as it must be, exorcism—Lord of Dark Places explores facets and implications of the Edenic myth as it parallels and can be used to comment on the Black man's American experience from freedom to the trek North . . . It is surprising that his performance in Lord of Dark Places has not earned him recognition for what he is: one of the most original and gifted Black satirists to come along since Wallace Thurman of Infants of the Spring." --Ronald Walcott, Black World and Contemporary Literary Criticism

"Hal Bennett’s Lord of the Dark Places is a satirical and all but scatological attack on the phallic myth, the original American folk drama in which the white female as virgin and bitch goddess and the Black male as defiler and nigger stud are the two central figures. If one accepts America herself as seductive matriarchal player, the phallic myth is also the archetypal drama of incest, and with a vengeance. This is the dominant metaphor of the novel. So it is that that common cultural assumption mentioned in Part I—the Black man as sexual monster dwelling in the social imagination--finally obtains in Lord of the Dark Places its essential and, for Bennett, inevitable form.” –Ronald Walcott, Black World/Negro Digest July 1974

Black, gay coming-of-age in the American South. In Bennett's novel, perverse sex and inverse Christianity are combined to provide an account of a young man finding his way to madness" Though it might be a bit strong for some readers, it remains "an excellent statement of black consciousness." –Library Journal 01 November 1970


"Bennett is a New York Genet" --New Statesman

"A powerful, surging book with great literary value. . .yes, the book is violent shocker, but it is also very moving, beautiful and sad." --Atlanta Journal Constitution