Tishomingo Blues was published by William Morrow in 2002. Dennis Lenahan, a professional high diver, witnesses a murder from atop his eighty-foot diving platform at a casino resort in Tunica, Mississippi. His subsequent entanglement with Robert Taylor — a charming African American hustler involved with the local Civil War reenactment scene — leads him into a world where the lines between performance, crime, and racial history become increasingly blurred.
The novel is one of Leonard’s most thematically ambitious: the Civil War reenactments (in which the South always wins, and Black participants are expected to play slaves) become a metaphor for the persistence of racial mythology in the American South. That Leonard addresses this through a crime plot rather than didacticism is characteristic.
Robert Taylor
Robert Taylor is one of Leonard’s most complex characters: a Black hustler who participates in Civil War reenactments with full awareness of the grotesquery involved — but also with an understanding that the reenactment world, with its obsessive detail and its suspension of modern identity, offers opportunities for a con man. His relationship with Dennis is built on mutual respect and mutual exploitation, and Leonard renders their dynamic without sentimentality.
The High Dive
The high dive — Dennis’s profession — gives the novel a unique visual signature. The eighty-foot platform provides both the literal vantage point from which he witnesses the murder and a metaphor for the outsider’s perspective: Dennis sees everything from above, detached, and the novel’s plot is driven by his attempts to come back to earth and deal with what he has seen.
Collecting Tishomingo Blues
First edition (2002, William Morrow, New York): Boards with dust jacket.
Approximate market values:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $25–$50
- Signed first edition: $50–$150
- Without jacket: $5–$10
Value trajectory (2016–2026): Minimal.
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest. Signed copies should reach $100–$300.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the title mean? Tishomingo is a town in northeastern Mississippi, named after a Chickasaw chief. The “blues” in the title evokes both the Mississippi musical tradition and the melancholy of the Deep South’s relationship with its own history.
Is this Leonard’s most political novel? Along with Bandits, yes. The Civil War reenactment scenes are a sharp commentary on how the South processes (and avoids processing) its racial history.