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'Johnny Geronimo: Art of Darkness' combines a 'Native Sam Spade' and noir
Introducing Johnny Geronimo, the tough-talking, hard-living Native American private investigator in Santa Fe.
He’s the lead character in the new graphic novel “Johnny Geronimo: Art of Darkness” by Gary Robinson.
Geronimo is Apache, and he sometimes goes by the nickname Patch.
It’s a noir novel that’s set in Santa Fe and nearby communities Lamy and Santa Clara Pueblo.
Noir novels and films are heavy on shadows, darkness and cynicism. “Johnny Geronimo” is no exception.
It opens with scenes from a nightmare Geronimo is having. He wakes to find a woman he’s in bed with, though he can’t remember her name.
Geronimo is getting dressed when his cellphone rings — it’s a police detective named Samuel Roybal. Geronimo tells Roybal, “I am sleep-, nicotine-, alcohol- and caffeine-deprived. Not a good way to start the day.”
Geronimo manages to pick himself up and get a move on. He agrees to help investigate the killing of an Anglo couple who are collectors of Native American art and then, in a subsequent case, the murder of a Native artist.
The novel has a few touches of horror. Readers see blood-red graffiti with the words “The Coyote Strikes” that’s been spray-painted on doors of two homes.
It may be a clue to the killer’s identity.
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In another scene, a character who may be the villain is seen sharpening a knife. He cuts himself. The blood leaks onto his teeth, revealing a demonic smile.
Robinson, the author of the novel, is of Cherokee and Choctaw descent.
“I have always been a fan of noir. This is my adaption of noir. (The title character) is a Native Sam Spade. I went from there,” Robinson said in a phone interview from his home on the Chumash Reservation near Santa Barbara, California.
Sam Spade was the protagonist in Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel “The Maltese Falcon” and in a feature film of the same name that starred Humphrey Bogart.
Robinson said “Johnny Geronimo” is actually his second book featuring the Geronimo character.
The first was a short novel he self-published at about the turn of the century. “I called it ‘Powerful Medicine.’ I had the same womanizing, hard-drinking character of Geronimo. It never went anywhere. I maybe sold 25 copies. But in my mind he’s been alive for 25 to 30 years,” he said.
Over his long career, Robinson said he’s written mostly children’s picture books. His bestselling book is “Native American Night Before Christmas.” He called it “a reverse cultural appropriation.”
He’s also written full-length novels in the Billy Buckhorn series, which Robinson described as a “supernatural Native American trilogy for young adults.”
Dale DeForest, who is Diné and lives in Albuquerque, created the art for “Johnny Geronimo.”
DeForest drew the images for the book based on descriptions that Robinson gave him.
“I guess I have a penchant for high-contrast images. It’s a bit of a dark story. That’s my signature style,” he said in a phone interview.
DeForest said his depiction of the Geronimo character “is sort of a combination of people I know — an amalgamation of them all rolled up into one.”
He grew up in what he called the “Napi” area, on Navajo Nation land about six miles south of Farmington. He later studied two-dimensional art and photography at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.
DeForest thinks the principles of photography lend themselves “to sequential storytelling, lighting, angles, perspective. They all come into play when you tell a story.”
“Johnny Geronimo” has a few scenes of horror. The ominous phrase “The Coyote Strikes” is a blood-red warning on two sets of doors.
In another series of scenes, an unidentified man in a floppy hat with long, straggly hair is sharpening the blade of a long knife. He cuts his thumb, sucks the blood off of it, and it eventually reddens his teeth.
He cautions: “By blood you judge me and by blood you will die.”
Because “Johnny Geronimo” doesn’t end with the capture or the death of the villain, DeForest hopes there are plans for a sequel.
The novel is part of the University of New Mexico Press’ Red Planet Books series. Lee Francis IV is the series editor.
David Heska Wanbli Weiden, who is of Lakota descent, wrote an afterword to the novel.
In it, Weiden wrote that in recent years Native authors have published works “of crime fiction, horror, speculative, romance and young adult literature … The last decade has seen Indigenous writers being nominated for — and winning — the highest awards in the most prominent literary genres.” At the same time, these authors’ books have been bestsellers, he added.
