Lanie Price: A Character Study (Part 2)
"Lanie is a brilliantly drawn character." —Caribbean Life
This is the second of a three-part study on Lanie Price, the society columnist featured in Darkness and the Devil Behind Me and Black Orchid Blues. I'll discuss what makes Lanie tick, what drives her and why she does what she does.
Lanie Price
Let's bring out the details. Lanie is a society columnist for The Harlem Chronicle, the author of a weekly column called "Lanie's World." She spends most of her time writing about social and charitable club meetings, who attended what party, when, where and most importantly, with whom. At the beginning of Darkness and the Devil Behind Me, we see that she's bored to tears with this gig, but learn that years earlier she'd actually lobbied for it, because at the time she saw it as a welcome relief from her job as a crime reporter for The Harlem Age. Back then, she wrote only about brutality, tragedy and wasted human potential. She wanted a change. As she states in Darkness and the Devil Behind Me:
"When I joined the Chronicle, I was tired of reporting on death and misery. I believed I could achieve good by reporting inspiring, positive news about the doings of Harlem's upper crust.
However, in the intervening years, Lanie gained a new perspective:
"I'd consistently been reminded that the 'light' news often has its dark side, too, and I wasn't doing anyone a favor by ignoring it. My job in life was to tell both the good and the bad. I had no grand ideas about being the catalyst for lasting change, but I did want to be able to look back and say I'd done my bit to keep the record straight."
In Darkness and the Devil Behind Me, Ruth Todd begs Lanie to write about her sister, Esther's, unsolved disappearance. Concerned that she might disappoint Ruth, Lanie hesitates but finally agrees to help her. It is then she realizes that in helping Ruth, she is also helping herself. She sees that in abandoning crime reporting, she had abandoned a part of herself:
"For the first time, in a long time, I felt a tremor of excitement, one that went hand-in-glove with a sense of relief. … Somewhere deep down was a stirring of the hunter's instinct. It had been years since I'd walked the beat, but the drive was still there, the need to ask questions, track down answers and assemble the delicate human puzzle behind every crime. My mind missed the concentrated effort. My guts missed the thrill of the result, and my nature missed the communion with darkness."
In the third installment, we'll see how this insight propels Lanie forward.
