Really pleased to share my review today of Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke as part of the blog tour.
A powerful thriller about the explosive intersection of love, race, and justice from a writer and producer of the Emmy winning Fox TV/Channel 4 show Empire
‘Dazzlingly good … a seriously impressive writer’ Observer
Southern fables usually go the other way around. A white woman is killed or harmed in some way, real or imagined, and then, like the moon follows the sun, a black man ends up dead.
But when it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules – a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger working the backwoods towns of Highway 59, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about his home state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home.
So when allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he is drawn to a case in the small town of Lark, where two dead bodies washed up in the bayou. First a black lawyer from Chicago and then, three days later, a local white woman, and it’s stirred up a hornet’s nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes – and save himself in the process – before Lark’s long-simmering racial fault lines erupt.
Amazon UK | Amazon US
MY REVIEWI have to admit shamefully that this is the first book I have read by Attica Locke, but I can guarantee it wont be the last.
When a local white girl is murdered in a small Texas town, the police form an investigation. Three days prior to the girls discovery, a black lawyer from Chicago was found murdered, but this seems to have been swept under the carpet. Ranger Darren Mathews, currently suspended finds himself in the little town of Lark investigating the murders and not all is as it seems.
As soon as Darren drove in to Lark, a rural East Texas town on Highway 59 I could feel the tension, this whole book is filled with tension and with each page you turn you can feel it building and building.
Darren having been on suspension knows there is more to the two murders than meets the eye and he’s a determined character, likeable but he’s a troubled soul. The local police force aren’t willing to completely co-operate with Darren being an out of Towner so it’s up to Darren to try to investigate and gain as much knowledge from the locals as possible. Having personal problems back home gives Darren a vulnerable side and it was easy to feel the battles he was dealing with in his head come alive on the page.
Bluebird, Bluebird is a wonderfully written novel that completely drew me in, it wasn’t easy-going at times, it’s quite disturbing but totally gripping. Filled with some wonderful characters it was easy to slip into this book and lose track of time, finding out the secrets and lies surrounding these characters was quite breath-taking and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.
I wouldn’t say this was a particularly fast paced thriller but it’s a story that has you guessing the whole way through, it’s full of surprises and like I said previously the tension builds on each page making you feel part of the story. It gave me the chills at times and the descriptions of characters and scenery made it so easy to visual as I was reading. With a satisfactory ending that also leaves you wondering, I would definitely recommend Bluebird, Bluebird and I’m really looking forward to reading more from Attica Locke.
FOLLOW THE TOUR
Attica Locke’s Pleasantville was the 2016 winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. It was also long-listed for the Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction, and made numerous “Best of 2015” lists. Her first novel, Black Water Rising, was nominated for an Edgar Award, an NAACP Image Award, as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was short-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her second book, The Cutting Season, is a national bestseller and the winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. A former fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmaker’s Lab, Locke has worked as a screenwriter as well. Most recently, she was a writer and producer on the Fox drama, Empire. She serves on the board of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.
