Winner of the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award 2018 2018 Edgar Award Winner for best novel 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 conflicted 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 back. So when 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 - before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt. 'In Bluebird, Bluebird Attica Locke had both mastered the thriller and exceeded it. Ranger Darren Mathews is tough, honor-bound, and profoundly alive in corrupt world. I loved everything about this book.' Ann Patchett 'Locke's writing is both sharp-edged and lyrical . This is thoughtful, piercing storytelling with the power to transport.' Diana Evans, Financial Times
Police Constable Pete Bradley has one year in the force and dreams of moving up the ladder. He's assigned as an aid to CID and working a routine nightshift with his partner when they stumble across a young woman's body. His search for her killer brings him deep into Soho's underbelly.
When the young son of an Aryan Brotherhood of Texas gang captain goes missing, Ranger Darren Matthews has no choice but to investigate the crime. Following the election of Donald Trump, a new wave of racial violence has swept the state. Dark, swampy and filled with skeletal trees, Caddo Lake is so large it crosses into Lousiana. This is deep country and the rule of law doesn't mean much to the Brotherhood, beyond what it can do for them. A further complication is that Brotherhood is squatting on the land of a former Freedmen's community, and one of the last descendants of these former slaves is actually a suspect in the possible murder of the missing boy. Instructed by his lieutenant to use the investigation to gather more evidence that might help to take down the Texas chapter of the Brotherhood, Darren is playing very dangerous game indeed.
The Great Depression led people to take desperate measures to survive. The marathon dance craze, which flourished at that time, seemed a simple way for people to earn extra money, dancing the hours away for cash, for weeks at a time. But the underside of that craze was a competition and violence unknown to most ballrooms. A lurid tale of dancing and desperation, Horace McCoy''s classic American novel captures the dark side of the 1930s.
A local family has been found brutally slain in their own home, and Wylie 'Coyote' Melville, professional therapist and hobbyist forensic consultant's friend Detective Sergeant Carlos O'Brien wants him to use his rare ability to 'read minds' - to see the clues.
El Paso and Ciudad Juarez sit across the Texas/Mexico border from each other. They share streets, share industry, share crime. One gang claims territory in both: Barrio Azteca, or as the Mexicans call them, Los Aztecas. This criminal organisation is responsible for most of the homicides committed in Juarez, and Felipe Morales is one of them.
Scandal, intoxication and lies flourish in the silent film studios of Paris. A silent film, destroyed in a fire in 1913, before it was seen even by its director. A lowly seamstress, who makes the costumes she should be wearing, but believes her talent - and the secret she keeps too - will get her a dressing room of her own.
Anna lives with her teenage daughter in a small New York apartment. Trying to meet people after her divorce, she begins attending singles nights, which is how she finds herself late at night, in a strange man's apartment. What happens next is a blank, but it's only the beginning of her nightmare.
Tells the stories of three desperate people. A father who is broken by grief and guilt. A son still haunted by the ghosts of his past. And a mother, desperate to save her child. In Cape Town, these three are drawn into a spiral of manipulation and murder that leaves them fighting for their sanity and their lives.
Released after a long stretch at Parpham Mental Hospital, Royston Blake finds that the world has moved on. But not everyone is happy seeing the old ways swept aside, and the 'Old Guard' - a mysterious opposition group well known on the letters page of the local paper - sets about recruiting Blake as its agent of retribution.
Jay Porter, a struggling personal injury attorney down on his luck, suddenly finds himself in a situation spiralling out of control. Jay knows a boat ride on the Bayou won't measure up to his wife's expectations of a birthday celebration, but it's all he can afford. Once a man of virtuous ideals, he is now just waiting for a break.
Cuban cop Hernandez has a score to settle, on behalf of a deadbeat dad, a 'traitor' who skipped free from Castro's control to set up a new life working illegally in Colorado. He settled in a ski resort popular with the Hollywood set, where the facade is maintained by the immigrant cleaners and labourers who work for below minimum wage.
The time is pre-Giuliani New York, when crack rules the city and hundreds are murdered every month. Michael Forsythe and his lads tumble through the streets, shaking down victims, drinking hard, and fighting block by bloody block. Soon Darkey White anoints Michael his rising star.
Still Head Doorman at Hoppers, Blake begins to notice a change in general punter behaviour. The norm of beery violence and lechery has given way to trance-like stares and nonsensical blatherings. Puzzled, he scratches his head and seeks solace at the bottom of a pint glass.
Reluctant bank robber Jack Burn is on the run after a heist in the US that left three million dollars missing and one cop dead. Hiding out in Cape Town, he is desperate to build a new life for his pregnant wife and young son. But on a tranquil evening in their new suburban neighborhood, they are the victims of a random gangland break-in.
Council worker Roger joined the ASBO unit because new departments are the best places to avoid work. Feeling oddly blank about the death of his father and wanting to escape the office, he goes to investigate a condemned tower block on the notorious Composer's estate.
On the run after being framed for murdering his family, South African journalist Robert Dell's only ally is his oldest enemy: his father. Bobby Goodbread, an ex-CIA hitman just sprung from prison for atrocities he committed whilst in the employ of the apartheid regime, joins his son on a bloody cross-country road trip.
An axe-wielding psychopath carves young Dora Suarez into pieces and smashes the head of Suarez's friend, an elderly woman. The unnamed narrator, a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police's Unexplained Deaths division, develops a fixation on the young woman whose murder he investigates and discovers that Suarez's death is more bizarre than suspected.
Just after dawn, Caren inspects the grounds of Belle Vie, the historic plantation house she manages. Back at her office, the gardener calls to tell her she missed something. Something terrible. At a distance, she didn't see. A young woman lying face down in a shallow grave, her throat cut clean. So there will be police, asking questions.
