There is a noir element to reading Nella Larsen’s Passing that isn’t apparent until the final pages, which is, perhaps, one of the reasons I keep returning to the beginning. Read those first lines in the voice of Humphrey Bogart reflecting on Irene Redfield’s guilty but also shameless conscience and lose yourself in Passing again, this time as a mystery. Lurking in every passage are clues to the enigmatic and provocative relationship between the sometimes influential, sometimes sanctimonious, and often dowdy Irene and glamorous, mysterious, but dangerous Clare.