I’ll preface this review with – I am from North Texas, not East Texas. I’m from big city Texas, not small town Texas. The Texas in this book is not directly the Texas I grew up in, but it is a Texas I recognize. For such a big state, it sure can be small. Also, for reference, the hate crime dragging death of James Byrd, Jr., was only 20 years ago. Feels like it should be a lot longer, but it most definitely is not. […]
Texas noir. #CBRBingo
Project: Catch Up On Review Backlog commences. No promises on the quality of my next ten or so reviews. I just want to get them done. (This will probably unfortunately result in subpar reviews for books that deserve much better.) Let’s start with a book I finished over a month ago, Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke. First things first, this book was incredibly well done. It’s a crime book set in Texas, featuring a black Texas Ranger as its protagonist. I knew that going in. […]
He had forgotten that the most elemental instinct in human nature is not hate but love, the former inextricably linked to the latter
I will likely read or listen to any book Attica Locke feels like writing. I really hope this, along with all her books, become movies or tv shows, because she has such an ear for dialogue and narrative, and is very good at plotting and creating stories that work and include a lot of additional interesting topics. This novel starts with a standoff between a white supremacist and an older Black man who refuses to take any more shit off people like the white asshole. […]
Ahead of the Curve
3.5 stars. Attica Locke is simply the best. I really wish I hadn’t read The Cutting Season first though. It’s always hard evaluating an author’s other work fairly when you know they’re capable of the absolute best. If a book is better than most, but not quite living up to their best work, how do you rate that? My gut response is to rate a sense of disappointment. Taking a few weeks to write this review, I’ve come around to appreciating this book for what […]
Odds and Ends
Pleasantville by Attica Locke; 4 out of 5 Stars This is the follow-up novel to Black Water Rising and like that one we follow the law career of Jay Porter of Houston, now 15 years older, recently widowed, and still holding down only a few clients. A mayoral election is in full swing, the historically Black neighborhood of Pleasantville has been hit by a chemical plant first shutting down jobs and then polluting the city, a wave of recent murders, and divisive politics set on […]
This should turn into a good show eventually
I think the writing in this book is really good. It’s as good as anything by Walter Mosley I have read, and that’s not entirely a good thing, but it’s good. But it happens to be a LOT like the second season of the Wire in a lot of ways and it’s about Black Panthers in some ways, so I get it, people don’t like it. The story here takes place in Houston in 1980. It’s several years after our protagonist Jay Porter was a […]