Bluebird, Bluebird
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3.7 • 13 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE CWA IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER AWARD
WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL
'Thoughtful, piercing storytelling with the power to transport' - FINANCIAL TIMES
'An expertly plotted triple whodunit' - SUNDAY TIMES
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of this absorbing series launch set in East Texas from Edgar-finalist Locke (Pleasantville), Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is suspended from the force because he rushed, while off duty, to the aid of a friend in a dispute that turned violent. Then, against his family's wishes and the law, he determines to check out a racially charged crime a few hours up the highway. In the desolate town of Lark, the bodies of a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman have surfaced in a bayou within a few days of each other. Darren discovers that the town revolves around two prominent figures: Wally Jefferson, proprietor of a white supremacist bar and close confidant to the county sheriff, and Wally's neighbor Geneva Sweet, a black business owner with her own brand of authority. As Darren investigates the two murders, he becomes immersed in Lark's fraught history. Darren must deal with his conflicting loyalties to his family and to Texas, as well as his identity as a black man, as he struggles for justice in this tale of racism, hatred, and, surprisingly, love.)
