Bluebird, Bluebird, the first in the Highway 59 trilogy, is an amazing Southern noir that it is so much more than the usual mystery. It’s also about home, whether the place of one’s birth or a found home; family; race; and justice.
The protagonist, Darren Matthews, leaves Texas for law school in Chicago but finds himself drawn back to his East Texas home and a job as a Texas Ranger. When he’s sent to the hamlet of Lark, Texas, to unofficially investigate two murders, one of a local White woman, the other a Black man from Chicago, he must solve the crimes while being a stranger in town. Though Black, he is an outsider, thus not trusted by local Blacks. As a Black man, he is not trusted by Whites. As a ranger, he is not trusted by the local police. He must save himself, the wife of the murdered Black man, and solve two crimes. Matthews thinks the crimes are racially motivated even as the local police try to sweep the racial aspects under the rug in an attempt to maintain a semblance of goodwill between the races, a goodwill that is utterly missing. He uncovers local secrets, both old and new, as he solves the murders.
As the White mother of a child who identifies as Black, I am always interested in books that highlight racial issues and how pervasive they are in American life. The prose here is taut yet lyrical and reeking with the atmosphere of East Texas as well as a sense of malice and that nothing has changed between the races since antebellum days. This antipathy culminates in the presence of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a White supremacist group, in Lark. As he investigates, Matthews carries his own haunted past with him: his new propensity toward excessive alcohol consumption, a drunk mother, and a wife who’s unhappy with his desire to be a ranger. Matthews’s personal journey is as intriguing as it colors the rest of the book. The title, Bluebird, Bluebird, references a John Lee Hooker rich bluesy tune of the same name, and a strong thread of music runs throughout. I will certainly finish the trilogy and probably the rest of Attica Locke’s backlist.
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Bluebird, Bluebird(Serpent’s Tail, January 1, 2018) is available through:
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