Bluebird, Bluebird

I received a galley of this book from NetGalley. It has not influenced my thoughts or opinions about this book.

Let me preface this by saying that I liked this book enough that despite having the opportunity to read a galley for free, I'm planning to buy a copy. I would also put this up there as one of my favorite books of 2017.

This book! Holy smokes, how has it taken me this long to read Attica Locke. I loved everything about this book – the strong sense of place, the complicated cast of characters, the racial tension, and how the plot developed. The pacing was perfect – a slow, steady ramp-up before weaving and winding through discoveries. And that ending was incredible.

If I could have, I would have read this book in one sitting. So many of the characters could have been tropes, but Locke made them feel real and flawed but not in an overwrought way. I'd love to see this one adapted for TV.

Edgar Award Winner, Best Novel 2018! This was very good. Big surprise near end (Won't tell you), Great characters and locations. I see that Attica Locke has been nominated for different awards for her other novels, I'm putting her on my Favorite Author's List. If you like mysteries you should like this! David

Darren Matthews is a Texas Ranger. He's also on suspension, drinking a little too heavily and clearly on the outs with his wife. And he's black.

Pulled into the tiny town of Lark to look into a double homicide where nothing is as it's seems. It's a local white girl and an affluent, out of town black man. Attica Locke is here to explore the tensions between rural and urban blacks, race in the South, justice and how it splits alongs color lines and the simmering reality of the Aryan Brotherhood.

I'm usually on board for this kind of exploration but I felt Bluebird, Bluebird stumbled within the confines of it's purported genre. It didn't entirely work as a detective story or a thriller and instead read like the first arc of a longer serial.

Part of the appeal of this book, to me, was its setting. It brought back the piney woods of East Texas, my hometown, perfectly, for good and for bad. But even if you aren't from there, you'll enjoy it if you like a good mystery, though where it not based on the piney woods I likely would have rated it a 3-star.