To say that Charles Fuller has a lot going on is putting it mildly. The one-time ladies’ man is newly married to a woman whom he has dedicated himself to. At the same time, he has started a business and is stoked about making it a success. And then there is the fact that he is on the hunt for the man who stole a huge amount of money from him. And if that isn’t enough, he suddenly must fend off a ruthless gangster who all-too eagerly wants to become a business partner. Charlie Mo has a full plate.

Charlie Mo had quite a few women in his past and has settled down and married Meghan. Even though he runs into some of old girlfriends, he is dedicated to get it right with Meghan and make his marriage to work. “How did I get so lucky?” he asks himself. When Meghan plans to open a boutique, Charlie wholeheartedly becomes protective and supportive without skipping a beat. Aside from satisfying his wife, Charlie’s other main priority is to make Charlie Mo’s Pack and Go, his moving company, a thriving business. With money he inherited from his deceased father’s funeral business along with his friend LaMarcus, they are working hard make Charlie Mo’s Pack and Go “the company of choice” in Texas. Adding to his days’ tasks, Charlie is determined to find Tin Can Stan, who was once like a father figure yet scammed more than a million dollars from him.

Soon enough, trouble raises its ugly head. First, Charlie hears that his former girlfriend Gabby was found dead, and he becomes curious about the particulars surrounding her death. He then begins receiving mysterious and salacious text messages from an Unknown Caller and wants to get to the bottom of it. While dining at an exclusive restaurant for a night on the town with Meghan, Charlie meets Dog Sugar, a notorious gangster who initially and aggressively wants to become his business partner.

After Charlie declines his offer, Dog Sugar aims to run him out of business and is determined to make Charlie’s life hellishly miserable.

Although “under Dog Sugar’s filthy hands and buzzard watch…he has the cops, politicians, judges, doctors, and the church in his back pocket,” many people want the ruthless gangster dead and gone. Charlie Mo and several acquaintances echo this sentiment, and they join alliances to take him down. The tricky part is that Charlie Mo doesn’t really trust everyone involved, including a long-ago girlfriend named Molly Hotsi Totsi, who is part of the scheme. What unfolds between the planning and the execution of the plan to take down Dog Sugar is what kept this reader turning the pages.

Dean Conan’s A Fool Indeed is the second book in the author’s The Fool’s Gold Chronicles series (Fool Me Thrice: Money Changes Everything is book one), and the plotlines and writing style hearken back to the 1990s and early 2000s when the urban or street lit/fiction genre was popular and booming. Many writers centered certain aspects and depictions of Black culture and life in their storytelling with unabashed authenticity and rawness. Profanity, gratuitous sex, and violence are usually on full display. The same goes here for A Fool Indeed. Though there are no heavy sociopolitical messages or memorable epiphanies here, what the reader comes to understand is that Charlie Mo’s story is one simply about reflection and atonement.

Conan’s plot is not too over-the-top when it comes to being a good guy defeats bad guy story. True love is at the story’s center. The short novel is loaded with many characters who make brief appearances to give the reader a hint of Charlie Mo’s past life that was mostly filled with partying, money, and women. (I chuckled at the names of some of his former partners: Restless Reva, Ice Cream Carmen, and Deadly Dominique.) Aside from the few grammatical missteps in the writing, the twists and turns in the storyline are entertaining and moments of suspense rise here and there, particularly about the plan against Dog Sugar. However, it is the fast-paced dialogue in A Fool Indeed that keeps the action moving and entices the reader to find out what happens next. It is total escapism from reading many of today’s news headlines.