A solitary figure bucks authority, deciphers apparent falsities to discover truth, and if lucky, somewhere along the way achieves justice for wrongs against the innocent. The endeavors undertaken frequently lead to insights into society's workings and frequently into its unfairness. This pattern recurs in many African American novels and in many detective novels; yet, for most of its history, the genre of detective fiction has remained very white, and very male. Whether we consider the gentleman detectives of classical series who came from or adopted the mannerisms of the upper classes, Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot being two examples, or the edgier, working-class figures of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe from hardboiled series, the racial bias of the form is notable.

In his study Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories (2009), Lenny Cassuto suggests that the lack of a black presence within the genre may be a matter of definition. Narrowly conceiving of the form as concerned primarily with the apprehension of criminals ignores traditions within black writing that would fall under the rubric. He offers passing novels as possible examples of detective fiction with “unusual crimes” (215) and transgressors of the color line as suspects who fear detection. The recovery work of African American literary history has discovered other instances that might fit the genre: Pauline Hopkins, Hagar's Daughter (1901–1902); John Edward Bruce, The Black Sleuth (1907–1909); and Rudolph Fisher, The Conjure Man Dies (1932), though until recently they were read as examples of early African American or Harlem Renaissance texts with their employment of the mode's conventions of secondary interest. As genre scholarship blossomed, however, greater appreciation for African American use of this aesthetic emerged.

Of course, the familiar question of what distinguishes black detective fiction from other forms arises. In The Blues Detective (1996), Stephen F. Soitos notes that African American revisions of traditional detective form include black detective personas who identify as being black, are aware of the two-ness of being raced as black while being American, and are skilled at adapting strategies of masking.