I liked the characters and story line. Some topical themes could have used more depth.

Free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

BLUEBIRD, BLUEBIRD by Attica Locke is a mystery and police procedural of sorts, hopefully the first in a series to feature Texas Ranger, Darren Mathews. The setting is so well-drawn as to almost be a character itself -- a one stoplight town, named Lark, in East Texas where a black man (lawyer from Chicago) and a local white woman are found murdered within days of each other. Racial tensions reminiscent of Jim Crow days permeate this well-written novel from an award winning author. Locke's other works include Pleasantville, winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction; The Cutting Season which won the Ernest Gaines Award; and the Edgar-nominated Black Water Rising.

Temporarily on suspension for helping a family friend, Ranger Mathews heads to Lark to investigate what appear to be racially motivated deaths. He encounters several memorable characters like the spouses, named Randie Winston and Keith Dale, of the murder victims or Wally Jefferson, the well-off proprietor of a white supremacist bar, or Geneva Sweet who runs a café catering to black clientele. It's a suspenseful and very complicated situation for Mathews who garners little support from local law enforcement or from his own estranged family.

One of the most apt descriptions I've heard comes from Walter Mosley who says that "BLUEBIRD, BLUEBIRD reads like a blues song to East Texas." BLUEBIRD, BLUEBIRD received starred reviews from Kirkus and Library Journal. Consider pairing this highly recommended mystery story with National Book Award nominee A Kind of Freedom by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton or the winner, Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward.

Darren Matthews is a Texas Ranger and he is also a black man. As a native of East Texas, with strong ties to home, Darren offers aid to an old friend, a move that jeopardizes both his marriage and the job he loves. While on suspension from the Rangers, Darren learns two bodies have washed up in the bayou in the tiny town of Lark: a black male lawyer from Chicago (Michael Wright) and a local white waitress (Missy Dale). Lark is a backwater darkened by poverty and simmering with racial tensions. Much of the story centers on a small cafe called Geneva Sweet's Sweets. The townsfolk are secretive, and both vicious and caring about its people. When Michael's widow Randie arrives in town, Darren is driven to help her get justice.

Bluebird, Bluebird is a layered story of a black man confronting his own racial ambivalence and ambition and is a fine work of rural noir.

I received an eARC via Netgalley and Mulholland Books with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book and provided this review.

This is the first book I’ve read by Attica Locke, but wow, it will not be my last! The writing is gorgeous, and the mystery is so taut. Darren Matthews is the perfect flawed protagonist - there is nothing simple about this man. This is a book that gently but unforgivinigly brings to the forefront so many of the festering wounds and consequences of racial inequality in our past and present here in American, and illustrates how they can have brutal and far-reaching consequences.

I can’t wait to read more by Locke (and I’ve got my fingers crossed that perhaps we’ll see Matthews again in future books!)

Also: THAT ENDING THO! What a gut punch.

This is a very well written gritty thriller. The style of writing adds to the suspense and makes this book a really good read. Attica Locke's style of writing is amazing. You can feel the racial tension the whole way through this book. Everything is described so well you feel as if you are in the middle of everything that is happening. The way the book ends it feels that there could be a sequel and I hope there is.

I had to keep reminding myself that Bluebird, Bluebird is set today, and not fifty years ago or so. It's depiction of race relations in rural Texas is reminiscent of books I have read about the Jim Crow era, and is quite bleak to say the least. It's a mystery of sorts. Troubled African American Texas Ranger Darren Matthews goes to a small town in East Texas to investigate the seemingly linked murders of a black man and white woman. As the story progresses, it feels like he is peeling back the different layers of a community deeply afflicted by racial violence and hatred. But Locke makes the story more complicated by emphasizing that hatred can sometimes be tightly bound up with love and attraction. It's a smart story, deeply and subtly taking on one of contemporary America's most vexing and ugly realities. At times, I found Darren's own troubled soul to be a bit much -- I don't know why every good fictional detective has to struggle with alcohol and crappy relationships. But the setting and mystery aspect of the story more than make up for this flaw. Well worth reading. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

From the premise you'd assume this is a story about the ugly racial politics in East Texas, full of white supremacists and oppressed black people but Attica Locke manages something far more nuanced. There are definite villains and white supremacy remains unchecked but nevertheless Locke does not rely on stereotypes. The mystery itself is a clever one with some twists but none that are too outrageous.

This is a powerful and stirring novel about race in the south that is both timeless and relevant. I enjoyed Locke's The Cutting Season but Bluebird, Bluebird knocked it out of the park. It gives new perspective on the difficulty of being a black, educated, successful man in the south. The story was complex and emotional and I could not turn the pages fast enough. Great read.

*I received an advance reading copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.*

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke is set in Lark, a small town in East Texas, where black people steer clear of a bar crawling with the Aryan Brotherhood and take solace at Geneva’s, a small cafe where they can get some food and a good haircut. Geneva has been a staple in Lark, even though she’s had her own problems with her husband and son being murdered, mere years apart. But those murders aren’t what brings Darren to town.

One of very few black Texas Rangers, Darren Mathews comes to Lark to investigate the murders of an out-of-town black man and a local white woman, but it’s not easy getting racist white people to talk to a black cop. It also doesn’t help that the town is corrupt; a rich white man owns the police, covers up for the Brotherhood, and has been a thorn in Geneva’s side for years because he wants her land. Throw in decades of secrets, marital problems, and racial tensions buried deep, and this case becomes much larger than Darren imagined.

But this novel is much more than a murder mystery. Woven throughout is social and political commentary on race and justice in contemporary America. The complexities of this murder mystery and the relationships in town show the hardships black Americans have faced since the Civil War. We see black people nervous about a white woman showing up dead because they know where the cops will start looking. We see Darren getting blamed for not being objective in this investigation because he’s black. There are so many more examples, and all feel scarily realistic.

Intelligently written, with fabulous character development and great dialogue, I was immersed in this world. Locke did a great job showing the good and bad in this southern town and in each of these characters. They’re all flawed, some more than others, but their flaws made this so much more real. There is no perfect character, no easy answer, and no neatly-tied ending. Where we leave some of these characters I could easily see more to come, too, and I’d love to revisit them again in the future if this were turned into a series.

This is a mystery that really sticks with you. Attica Locke has formed a fascinating plot around race and racism in Texas, with intricate back stories and a lot to say about prejudice in policing. The themes and characters in this book are really strong; however, the storytelling got a bit meandering and convoluted, making it difficult to follow at times. But definitely worth a read!

Thought-provoking...

African-American Texas Ranger Darren Matthews is on suspension when a colleague asks him to look into a case in the small town of Lark in East Texas. Two murders have been committed – a black male lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman, and the racial tensions which were already simmering in the town look like they might explode. It's up to Darren to try to find out what happened before more violence erupts... but there are people in the town who don't want old secrets disturbed and will go to any length to stop him.

The book is very well written and the plot is interesting, revolving around the various relationships, open and hidden, amongst the people of this small town. Fundamentally, it's a book about racism and veers towards being too overt in its message-sending, but for the most part the excellent characterisation and sense of place carry it over this flaw. It has something of the feel of an updated version of In the Heat of the Night, with Darren mistrusted and almost ostracised by the white power-brokers of the town, having to act as a lone hero standing up for the black residents against an institutionally racist system and a bunch of terrifying white supremacists. However, Darren is no Virgil Tibbs – he's on suspension for acting as a maverick, he has a drink problem and his marriage is on the rocks, surely proving convincingly (and rather tediously) that there's very little difference between black and white detectives in contemporary fiction.

Had I read this a year ago, I'd have been saying it dramatically overstates the racial divide in the US. But after the last few months of sons of bitches and very fine people, I found it frighteningly possible. However – and I'm going to get polemical myself here – while I understand why people who are victims of any form of oppression are likely to develop opposite prejudices, I can't say I'm much fonder of anti-white racism than anti-black. There is not a single decent white person in this book, and conversely there are no bad black people. When a black person occasionally does something morally dubious, it's made clear that they've been more or less forced into it by society's racism against them. The white people however are simply racist with no real attempt to consider why this might be so. Of course, sometimes this form of exaggeration can work in literary terms to highlight an issue, but I can't feel that it moves the debate on – it's more of a simple protest, maybe a howl of pain. I can see it feeding into both black outrage and liberal white hand-wringing, but I have to ask, given the state of America as seen from distant Scotland, do either of those things really need feeding at this point? Personally, I feel something more nuanced – more perceptive of the underlying reasons for the polarisation of American society – would be more useful. But then, I'm not a black American and Attica Locke is...

The result of this was that I began to find the portrayal of the town less credible as the book went on. The action takes place mainly in two places – a café where the black people hang out, and a bar where the white supremacists gather. Where are the other townsfolk? Even if they were irrelevant to the plot, I'd have liked to feel that they existed – to see them at least out of the corner of my eye. Maybe all white people in East Texas really are white supremacists, and maybe all black people do spend all day every day in a café scared of being killed, but I found myself progressively less convinced.

This might all make it sound as if I hated the book, but I didn't. The quality of the writing and the flow of the story kept me engaged, and if I weren't a political animal I probably wouldn't have been so conscious of what I saw as a lack of nuance in the portrayal of the racism. It's all down to timing – at another time, say, a year ago, I would probably have been saying this makes for an excellent wake-up call for people who, like me, had come to think that America was finally getting over the legacy of slavery. But we've surely all woken up now and therefore it feels somehow redundant, or perhaps even part of the problem, as each side continues to stand on the moral high ground throwing rocks at the other side.

I realise this has been more of a political statement than a book review. But perhaps if the book serves a purpose beyond entertainment, and I'm sure Locke intends that it should, it's to stir rational debate. I certainly recommend it – as you can tell, I found it thought-provoking even if I'm not convinced my thoughts are the ones Locke intended to provoke. But stripping my political venting out, I also found it an enjoyable and well written read.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Mulholland Books.

I had to read this book after hearing an interview with the author where she discussed being from Texas, and her ambivalence about the state. She now lives in California, but thinks of Texas as home, and she described the difficulty other people have relating to that. I still live in Texas and I relate to this ambivalence, having a long family history here yet feeling that Texas is going in the wrong direction.

Darren Mathews is a black Texas Ranger, maybe the first legacy black ranger after his uncle was one of the first black members of the almost 200 year old police force. Texas Rangers are legendary figures, but Darren is working in East Texas where racism is thriving. His status is hard for white East Texans to grasp, especially in the small town of Lark where Mathews is investigating the murder of a white woman and the possible murder of a black man. He is also suspended from his job, separated from his wife, and indulging a tendency to alcoholism.

Locke's ambivalence toward Texas is evident in Mathews's ambivalence at some major crossroads in his life-- should he go back to his wife? Should he go back to law school? Should he continue this investigation, which is being botched by the local sheriff? In Locke's own words: "Darren's ambivalence about his home state is a mirror for my own and I also meant it to be a stand-in for black folks' ambivalence sometimes about where we fit in America — to what degree is this place truly our birthright and to what degree can we afford to feel passionate patriotism for a place that frequently shows us such disdain?"

The town of Lark has a long history of racism and some very tangled family histories that cross the racial divide. On the facade it is divided very clearly, but people are more complex than their racist tendencies. Ranger Mathews sets about solving the crimes, undoing his suspension, and figuring out his marriage and familial obligations. Locke's writing is engaging and her characters are complex. I have watched enough CSI and Law and Order to know that suspension of disbelief is key to crime dramas, and you will need to bring some of that along here. Mathews's behavior on the job is pretty hard to believe, e.g. bringing along the widow of a murder victim along on the investigation, but it's worth suspending disbelief to get at the nitty gritty of the characters and the story.

I would definitely add this to my recommended reading list of Texas books, and I can't wait to see what comes next in this series. Thanks to Netgalley and Mulholland Books for sending me a complimentary e-galley of this book. My opinions are my own.

I was quite excited to be able to read this book. I thought it looked good and I wasn't disappointed at all. I really liked the Texas Ranger and how he was there to solve the mystery of the two murders.

It has been said that the mystery genre is the “romance of justice”. Bluebird, Bluebird is the story of one man who has devoted his career to defending that justice, even though he is all too aware that it seldom applies to him. Not just because he’s a cop, but because he’s a black cop, a Texas Ranger, in rural East Texas.

And pursuing justice, for a black man murdered in a small town, and for himself, is a fast way to run afoul of his bosses at the Rangers, of the local white police who have already decided how things are going to be, and of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas who have multiple reasons for wanting to gun him down.

Not just the obvious one, that he’s a black man with authority and a gun. Or even that he’s a black man who is trying to help take them down. Not that either of those reasons, or just the simple fact that he’s a black man, isn’t enough of a reason for members of this militant arm of the old KKK, with better armaments and access to entirely too much drug money.

That alone is plenty of reason for Darren Mathews to want to take them down, instead. And with more justice.

Although Bluebird, Bluebird is written as a mystery, it’s really all about race relations, a subject that the Texas Rangers as an organization refuse to acknowledge or even talk about.

While at first it seems as if the mystery is all wrapped up in the very sorry state of relations between the black and white populations of tiny Lark, Texas, in the end it turns out to be much more about relations in general, as despite all of the political and social restrictions that attempted to separate the races, the fact is that the entire town, black and white, are all related, and have been for generations.

And that someone has used “the way things have always been done around here” to hide a crime that is about anything but the way things have always been done. Except that it also is.

Mathews finds himself walking a tightrope. Being a good cop requires following the trail of evidence wherever it might lead. Being allowed to remain a cop, good, bad or otherwise, requires that he accept the locals’ willingness to sweep the murder of a black man under the rug in order to prosecute a man who is certainly guilty of the murder of a white woman.

He discovers that he can’t let it rest, even if it means that he loses both his badge and his family. Only to realize, at the end, that the problem at the heart of the mystery has followed him home.

Escape Rating A: This one is a thriller. And a thrill, from beginning to end.

Mathews is a man caught in the middle. Multiple middles, and they all contradict each other. Being a black cop, a black Texas Ranger, is to be a walking contradiction in too much of East Texas. He can’t be an authority figure because he’s a black man, and yet, as a Ranger he outranks all the local law enforcement – including the ones who have to fight the impulse to shoot a black man with a gun on sight.

He has to walk a fine line between the way that things are done and the things that need to be done. The difficulty of straddling this particular line is easily seen through the reactions of the widow of the victim, a black woman from Chicago with an international reputation as a fashion photographer who expects to be paid deference, and who instead has to watch Mathews do his best, which often isn’t very good, to provide just enough deference to keep from getting shut out, or just shot, while still hanging onto at least a scrap of his pride.

The crimes are as puzzling as any mystery. What seems contradictory to the reader, while at the same time feeling completely true to life, is the way that the white authorities have decided the outcome before the investigation even begins – in fact without conducting an investigation at all. As far as they are concerned, it must have happened a certain way because that’s the way that things always happen – even if they didn’t.

The reader wants to rail at the pages, to force someone to see things as they are, instead of as they want them to be – and of course that’s not possible. But it does make the reader empathize with Ranger Mathews as he tries to find a way to make things right – when that is not the outcome that anyone around him gives a damn about.

Mathews is a fascinating and flawed character, who realizes at the end that the person he has deceived the most in this entire investigation is himself. The story ends with a chill that forces the reader, as well as the protagonist, to re-evaluate everything they thought they learned. The hallmark of a terrific story.

Darren Matthews was gone—free, maybe—from East Texas that seemed to have a grip on so many who were unable, or afraid, to leave. Darren was in his third year of law school in Chicago, married to a fellow student, and ready to take on the world. But duty--his sense of it anyway, not his lawyer and professor Uncle Clayton’s, or his wife Lisa’s--called, and Darren returned to become a Texas Ranger, following in the footsteps of his Uncle William, the first Black Ranger.
But things don’t always work as planned, and the beginning of Bluebird, Bluebird, the fourth novel by Attica Locke, find Darren suspended from the Rangers, separated from Lisa, and battling the demons of alcohol. But when a friend from the FBI calls and asks him to look into two deaths in nearby Shelby County, one of a black man and the second a white woman, Darren can’t resist. He’ll just look, see if they’re connected, maybe race related, and report to his friend. Too much effort could put what’s left of his career in jeopardy, but not looking into it could mean that the deaths could go uninvestigated, and Darren wouldn’t have that. His “looking into it” uncovers a town that seems not to have progressed in decades, and a possible stronghold for the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. Were the deaths related? How deep are the ties of the ABT to local law enforcement? And how far will they all go to prevent Darren from finding the truth?
Bluebird, Bluebird has something for most readers. A great crime to investigate; a Texas Ranger family legacy, complete with its blemishes; the story of a small East Texas town; and the roles of race in America, both today and over the lifetimes of many characters in this book. Some parts made me wish the book was set in 1917, not 2017, as there was clearly not enough progress in the 100-year interim.

A great thriller exploring pressing issues. This was my first Attica Locke novel and I will definitely be reading more by this author. Highly recommend!

I think this is a very important book to read as it deals with something that we must be aware of which is racism in our daily life

I wasn't able to finish the entire book in the time frame I had it, but what I read was really enjoyable. The southern quality of it reminded me a lot of To Kill a Mockingbird, and the characters were so well written that you could almost see them in front of you. Locke's style is unlike most mysteries and I think that appeals to a lot of people.

Something was off about the murders in this small Texas town: the black man died first and then the white woman. This brought the murders to the attention of Texas Ranger Darren Mathews, even though he was on suspension. As a favor to a friend, and his own growing curiosity, he heads to Lark and uncovers a lot more than racism. While there he finds himself in a serious hot mess and temporarily back on the job, though potentially only as a token figure. Meanwhile, he struggles with alcohol and pressures from his wife and uncle. And this is just one of the deeply developed characters in the book! The story is well written with realistic characters that remind us that there is never just one side to a story. I enjoyed the character of Darren Mathews, Texas Ranger, so much that I wish this were the beginning of a series. He is strong, weak, and flawed, all at the same time.