Bluebird, Bluebird (A Highway 59 Novel, 1)

Harlan Coben recommended this book on the Today Show as a Christmas gift. I bought it for myself. The story of a black Texas Ranger sent to look into the murders of a black man and a white woman in two consecutive days was not exactly cheery but it was a very good book! Darren is in the process of trying to sort out some of his own personal and professional problems as he looks into the murders in Lark , Texas. He meets the widow of the black man and promises that he will find his killer. He suspects the husband of the white woman for a while but believes his story that while he laid some hurt on the man-he was still alive when he walked away from him. Page -turner!

It took me a while to get into this story about a black Texas Ranger who’s suspended for going to the aid of an acquaintance who was being harassed by a white supremacist who was on his land. That supremacist is found dead two days later. Darren is already struggling with his marriage and drinking too much in his loneliness and frustration.Despite being suspended, when he hears about a black man found dead under suspicious circumstances in a town of 200 people that’s well known for having a high tolerance for members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, he can’t help but nose around, especially when a white girl is found dead in the same bayou just two days later. ABT is even worse than the KKK because it deals drugs like meth among its many criminal ties.This is when the story really picks up. I was taking notes and I still had a hard time figuring out who was related to whom and how, but I got the gist of it. Once I got into it, I devoured the book in a day.I enjoyed this mystery, which doesn’t shy away from the complexities of race and family.

Several interlacing plots involving crime, love and hate, and racial prejudice in Texas. Hero is a black Texas ranger who has drinking problems, and wants to keep the world safe for poor black people in forgotten rural areas, from which he also came. Villains include Aryan Brotherhood gangsters. Nice beginning, good plot with twisrs and turns, and life in a town of 200 people, including a gutsy 70 yr old black owner of a roadside cafe. Many secondary characters play good roles.

I read several positive reviews of this book and was very excited to begin reading it. My excitement lasted through the introduction and then evaporated. Let me tell you why.The NYT review described the author's prose as lyrical in the style of a classic blues song. I found that to be true to a limited extent. The first few pages of the book describing Geneva's visit to the graves of her husband and son were evocative of place and emotionally moving. If only the entire book had been that good.My biggest complaint about this book is the main character, Darren Matthews, an African American Texas Ranger. To put it bluntly, Matthews if a mess. He's conflicted and doubtful about his career, his marriage, his place among the other Texas Rangers, the widow of one of the victims, and his life path in general. There is so much self doubt and second guessing going on in this character's head that we get only occasional mentions of the crimes Matthews is ostensibly investigating. If I were one of the fictional victims I'd feel neglected. The main character doesn't really get down to investigating the crimes until over one hundred pages in to the novel. Perhaps that is what passes for award winning crime/mystery/thriller fiction these days.I'll leave this in the neighborhood little free library and re-read a Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett.

This is a well written novel and the only reason I give it 4 stars is that the hero - a black Texas Ranger - is an alcoholic who is stupid enough to buy liquor while in uniform and drinks on the job. This is a disconnect from the rest of the novel. Locke should know that the early first blacks in once segregated circumstances were careful lest their white bosses would find any excuse to fire them. Otherwise, the plot and characters feel real. It was often the case that the first blacks were overqualified for the job, having more education than their colleagues and their bosses. That is the case here. Locke skillfully relates the small towns of the south where residents are enmeshed with each other across race and where everything is civil as long as everyone knows their place. It is curious that the redneck bad guys belong to the Aryan brotherhood rather than the Klan. It is also farfetched that a black man would go into the local redneck bar for a drink. But thats only a small quibble. I look forward to the sequel.

Perhaps it's me for, in the face of other very positive reviews, I did not enjoy it. I found the writing clumsy and at times difficult to follow. I read at least a book per week and don't usually have this problem.It does portray an aspect of my favourite state in raw no holds barred terms. Racism according to Ms. Locke still abounds as does good ole boy justice. The characters are almost believable, but the story is over complicated with a predictable ending.I did like that the " hero" was no saint, but a rather flawed character.I dislike being negative about any book as with this one in particular a powerful amount of research and hard work has gone into it.

At the outset of Bluebird, Bluebird, Darren Mathews – a committed Texas Ranger with marital troubles and alcohol dependency issues – is suspended from active duty pending the conclusion of an investigation into his involvement in a violent altercation between a long-time family friend and a local racist thug. However, when a pair of bodies – a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman – are dragged out of the bayou in an East Texas town called Lark, Mathews puts the job he loves in jeopardy and travels up Highway 59 to investigate. In doing so, the town’s racial fault-lines are blown wide open, and all manner of uncomfortable secrets come tumbling out.The publishing process is a long and arduous one, and I’m sure this book was completed long before Donald Trump oozed into the White House and cranked up his bile-flecked carnival barker theatrics. Nevertheless, the antagonists here feel like Trump supporters to a man – from self-satisfied local landowner Wally Jefferson, to the meth-fuelled Aryan Brotherhood members who drink in the nearby bar he owns – and the ugly racial tensions give the book a frighteningly contemporary feel.The swaggering-but-damaged Mathews is a great conduit for the righteous anger that Locke’s book runs on: an imperfect man with perfect values, kicking over rocks in a town where he clearly isn’t welcome. Combining the personal and the political is a tough feat, and Locke makes it look easy.The central mystery that drives the narrative of Bluebird, Bluebird is a puzzle wrapped in contradictions and contrivances, and in a lesser writer’s hands this could have diminished the story’s appeal. Locke’s easy storytelling style and rich, evocative prose means that this is never an issue, and the story is unpredictable and spiked with tension.Locke’s excellent 2009 debut Black Water Rising was a memorable, impressive book, and Bluebird, Bluebird is every bit as good. I look forward to the sequel – and the in-development TV series that is reportedly on the cards.

The third novel I have read by this author and in my opinion her best yet. Not just a gripping thriller but underpinned by an acute awareness of issues both current and past in America. Characterisation is strong, although the flawed protagonist could be regarded as a touch cliched and with such a vivid sense of place one can almost smell the air. The oppressive atmosphere and tension ratchets to the explosive penultimate scene. And then comes the end. And what an end. Enigmatic does not do this justice. I put the book down after reading for half the night and was quite unable to sleep as I went over different episodes, seeing how they worked together to make such a gripping read. Take my word. Read this book

I gave up on this at 50% first time around; but other members of the book club said it was ok so I went back and restarted and finished it this time.I was definitely too harsh in my judgment first time- and it is well written but there is far too much internalising - especially about The Texas Rangers - and this slows the plot. In addition I can’t say the reading about this part of Texas is far from uplifting.I was not impressed with the ending which sets up a sequel, which I won’t be reading.

Darren Matthews is one of the few black men in the Texas Rangers. He has sworn to uphold the law but when we are introduced to him in this book he's been suspended from the force as he may have compromised his position by intervening to support a friend accused of murdering a white extremist. However, his suspension is pushed to one side, as circumstances lead him into the middle of investigating two murders in the back roads of East Texas. One victim is black, the other white - but are the murders related? Is there any link with the local beer joint where the regulars are white supremacists?This is Attica Locke's fourth novel set in the deep south. She offers us a compelling story, featuring a broad cast of characters - from the psychopathic to the hopeless and downtrodden. We learn Darren is an all too fragile lawman as he struggles to keep a grip on the investigation in the face of bigotry and hostile local law enforcement. In a place where characters on both sides of the racial divide are blinded and warped by generations of prejudice, ideals of justice and truth can be elusive.This is a very well written atmospheric book. The quality of the descriptive writing conjures up the dust, heat and swampy decay of an isolated small town in rural Texas. The plot immerses the reader in a tangled untidy pattern of intrigue. Issues of belonging, identity and race are always just below the surface. Locke avoids simplistic neat resolutions in a thought provoking, informative, and, perhaps, rather unsettling story.