Bluebird, Bluebird

Darren Mathews has been suspended as a Texas Ranger pending the results of an inquiry regarding his allegedly lying to a grand jury. Yet his FBI friend Greg Heglund, knowing that his interest would be piqued by it, told him of two murders in a small Texas town, the first a Black man from Chicago and second a local white girl. The local sheriff was making the former into a robbery/death and the latter into a domestic dispute of some sort. Knowing however, that the Aryan Brotherhood has a strong hold in the town, made for curiosity.

Mathews, despite having to turn in his badge, figures out he has about a day to drive, take a look and return. What he finds reeks of something other than a robbery gone awry. It is a town where everyone knows show more everyone else and everyone else’s business, where half the town is related to the other half, regardless of skin color and where secrets abound. Being a Black man nosing around, regardless of his law enforcement status, can be dangerous and even deadly.

I’d never read Attica Locke before, despite her book Black Water Rising being nominated for an Edgar Award. I’m sorry I waited so long. Bluebird, Bluebird is filled with musical references, something I love. It’s got colorful characters, both Black and white, many descendants of either slaves or slave owners…sometimes both. Geneva is the Black woman who, having experienced heartache, still mother’s everyone. Wally is the landed gentry whose family homestead dates back to the 1800s and who thinks he runs the town. (He might.)

There is the usual repartee between the rogue cop (Mathews) and his boss, the unheeded warnings and the rebukes. There is the credit starved FBI friend. There is the romance gone south. There’s drugs and beatings and racial tension of the south. In other words, all the ingredients of a good mystery. Bluebird, Bluebird, exceeding my high expectations. show less

Murder, Race, Duty Collide in Texas

Yes, there’s a double murder to be solved here and arriving at the solution is something of a thrill ride. But, really, the questions most notable in the novel revolve around the main character, Darren Mathews, the black Texas Ranger.

“Texas Ranger,” these are magic words that conjure up all sorts of images, with the most prominent being “integrity,” “respect,” and “honesty.” Why mention these at the outset? Because, as readers will discover as the pages flip by, these are the fulcrum upon which Ranger Mathews teeters from start to finish, until we learn exactly where he stands in relation to those concepts. Then there’s the question of why anybody would quit the University of show more Chicago law school to return to Texas to be, essentially, a cop. What the heck is it about Texas that firmly roots a black man to its vast geography populated with its fair share of American racists? As if murder, Ranger fealty, and Texas blood are not sufficient, there’s also self torture over a marriage in peril to occupy the scattered underworked portions of Ranger Mathews’ mind.

The novel opens with Ranger Mathews caught in a dicey situation. He is testifying before a grand jury regarding the murder of a belligerent Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT) member. He was killed shortly after an incident on a family friend’s property, at which Mathews was present. It’s a tightrope the Ranger walks, and it haunts the entire novel, even after the grand jury delivers its decision. It’s sufficiently compromising that Ranger Mathews finds himself suspended until its resolution.

In the meantime, he receives a request from a friend at the FBI to amble on over to Lark, TX, were a double murder has just occurred involving a black man and a white woman, murders with racial implications and possible links to the ABT. There he mets an assortment of people, black and white, living side by side, or more literally across Route 59, in the case of Wally Jefferson III and Geneva Sweet’s Sweets, and up Route 59, in the case of Jeff’s Juice House, a bar owned by Wally, frequented by whites, and popular with the local ABT. This is the ABT that’s not supposed to exist in Sheriff Van Horn’s county, the lawman in charge of the double murder investigation. What you have operating here is racial animus and fear, a sort of feudal juxtaposing of Wally’s Monticello-styled manse (his dog resides in an ersatz White House) and Geneva’s thrown up shack of an eatery and gathering place.

If you sense a connection here, you’re right, but it is even stronger than you can possibly suspect. These connections extend back in time before Geneva met her traveling bluesman husband Joe, who up and quit to settle with her. Everything is rooted and connected in Texas in ways that folks like these people and Ranger Mathews understand. And this includes the present murders, a murder from long ago, a love left unrequited, and a powerful stockpile of resentment. After some bruising encounters, after managing to get reinstated, after falling a little bit for the murdered man’s wife, after twisting himself in knots over his wife and her desire for him to return to law school and the precarious state of their marriage, Ranger Mathews solves not only to the double murder, but also one from Geneva’s past.

And what of his marriage? What about that grand jury decision? What secret does it hold to the moral character of Ranger Mathews, to the integrity and respect commanded by a Texas Ranger? The answers await you. show less

When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules--a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home. When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders--a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman--have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes--and save himself in the process.
Darren Matthews leaves Texas to attend law school in Chicago but soon finds himself back in his Texas hometown doing his job of a Texas Ranger. He’s show more been sent to Lark, Texas, to unofficially investigate two murders...that of a local white woman, and the other of a black man from Chicago. He must solve the crimes while feeling that he is almost a stranger in town. He finds that he is still the outsider, not trusted by either the black or the white communities. The worst thing is that as a ranger, he's not trusted by the local police either. In spite of those difficulties, he still must save himself, protect the wife of the murdered black man, and solve two crimes.

Matthews is fairly sure that the crimes are racially motivated even though the local police try to sweep the racial aspects under the rug in an attempt to maintain a resemblance of goodwill between the two races, where at present there is in reality, no goodwill. He uncovers old and new secrets, as he works to solve the murders.

I'm sure that racial issues are both a difficult and touchy subject to write about, but Attica Locke does a good job of it. The story simply reeks with the atmosphere of the country during the timeframe that the book was set in, as well as a strong sense of malice. This solidifies for the reader the idea that nothing much has changed between the races since the antebellum days. Hopefully this is not the case and is only the author's way of further setting the "feel" for the story. It doesn't help matters any when we encounter the presence of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a white supremacist group, based in Lark.

As he investigates, Ranger Matthews is not without his own haunted past; his new alcohol habit, his vivid memory of his usually intoxicated mother, and his wife who is very unhappy with his desire to be a ranger. His personal journey is intriguing, but it colors the rest of the book and takes away somewhat from the story itself. The title, "Bluebird, Bluebird", is what drew me to it to start with. It's in references to the John Lee Hooker song of the same name. In spite of mostly liking this one, I'm not sure if I will read the other 2 books in the trilogy. show less

she does an amazing job here of balancing so much. she has this texas ranger who believes in justice but also is stepping outside the bounds of his role and not lying on the witness stand but definitely not being completely forthright either. he makes assumptions about race and the racial tensions in this small town he's a visitor to, while investigating a crime that he believes stems from the same racial assumptions and tensions. he makes bad decisions but also, when he thinks injustice - even for the criminal - is happening, he fights it.

locke is doing so much here, and all of it well. the different stories woven in, the way things come back up that you thought were dealt with, it's all deeper and more intricate than it seems. brava.

Set in the East Texas weeds and swamps, this little debut thriller is an eye-opener. Locke takes the best of the thriller and mystery genres and turns them on their head with a hero for today - Darren Matthews, a black Texas Ranger. Suspended and in the midst of a troubled marriage, he takes on the Aryan Brotherhood, in a place where the AB and its racist notions are deeply rooted. Outside of a couple unbelievable procedural turns, the book is just about perfect. Looking forward to the sequel. The book is a great success in so many ways, not the least of which that it's author is an African-American female - not easy for a book with this kind of hero and with this kind of author to get onto the shelves.

3.75 stars

Darren is a black man and a Texas Ranger. Though he is on suspension, he gets a tip that there have been two murders one county over – a black man and a white woman. Bodies found in the river a few days apart. Initially, he heads over just to see what things are looking like. Turns out there is an active chapter of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (a modern-day KKK) in this small town where there hasn’t been even one murder in decades. When he does get the go ahead from his Ranger supervisor to help investigate, the local sheriff isn’t thrilled.

I mostly liked this, but some of the flashbacks to previous happenings didn’t completely hold my interest. I liked Darren, but didn’t like some of the other characters much. I show more feel like dark and gritty are good words to describe this one. I do plan to continue with book 2 at some point. show less

Attica Locke’s novel paints a rather gruesome picture of rural life in East Texas. I would like to think that she has exaggerated the pervasive racism and the terrifying activities of underground neo-Nazi organisations such as the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, although I suspect they are all too realistic.

Her story is very well constructed and written. The main protagonist is Darren Matthews, a black Texas Ranger (I hadn’t realised that the Texas Rangers still existed, believing that they were something from the Wild West past). Although he had been born into near poverty in East Texas, he had ‘escaped’, studying law at university in Chicago. He had, however, decided to participate in law enforcement after the ghastly show more ‘dragging’ in Jasper, Texas in which an African American was dragged behind a truck until his death.

Having become embroiled in an altercation involving a family friend which was followed shortly afterwards by the murder of a neo-Nazi thug who had threatened that friend, Matthews finds himself suspended pending the outcome of a Grand Jury hearing. In the meantime, a colleague asks himself to visit Lark, a small town in East Texas, which has just seen two murders: one of an African American who had been passing through, and then a second of a young white woman to whom he had been seen talking in the local rough bar.

Upon arriving in Lark, Matthews finds himself up against a wall of silence from the white inhabitants, while the smaller African American community is also less than welcoming. Perhaps predictably, the local Sheriff is plainly resistant to outside intervention by the Texas Rangers at all, let alone from an African American. This is, perhaps, familiar territory, explored in the Virgil Tibbs films, but it is no less powerful for that. Attica Locke writes with great clarity and her characters seem completely plausible.

It is not a pleasant novel, but it is compelling and very powerful. show less