Karma Incarnate: The Best of Foolkiller

A few years ago the comedian Bill Cosby addressed an issue which has long been discussed within the African American community: the responsibility of certain blacks to not behave like stereotypes. Cosby’s outspokenness made public a topic that had mostly been a private one, and the discourse that followed was observed in newspapers and magazines, on radio and television: these featured the thoughts of many who argued for or against Cosby’s statement, and their vehemence—their need to confirm or counter his view—leads us to Bryan Gibson’s first novel, Karma Incarnate: The Best of Foolkiller.

Karma Incarnate is about a man, Joseph Tally, who is slowly losing himself to Alzheimer’s, but before he vanishes completely, he reveals to his son a secret life of shadows and death: “…for thirty years I’ve been a soldier in a secret war, a rogue agent moving stealthily beyond the reach of my government. I changed my name, of course; the name I had no longer suited me: I changed my name, date of birth, and social security number—indeed, Jumoki, I became a new man...but I remained the killer of fools.” Obsessed with James Bond and Friedrich Nietzsche, Tally fuses these obsessions with one more: concern, both for his people and his community, recalling haunting, often violent “missions” whose goal is the end of harmful stereotypes, and the elimination those of who perpetuate them: “The kill, no matter its necessity, never brings me joy, nor anything close to it; but I do what I must for the greater good—it is why I am.” Throughout this work, readers will be struggling to determine if what he tells his son is true, or a delusion, an effect of the disease; but whether believed or doubted, the father’s words are a revelation.