What do you think?
Rate this book
Jay Porter #1
Black Water Rising
On a dark night, out on the Houston bayou to celebrate his wife's birthday, Jay Porter hears a scream. Saving a distressed woman from drowning, he opens a Pandora's Box. Not the lawyer he set out to be, Jay long ago made peace with his radical youth, tucked away his darkest sins and resolved to make a fresh start. His impulsive act out on the bayou is heroic, but it puts Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him is practice, his family and even his life. Before he can untangle the mystery that stretches to the highest reaches of corporate power, he must confront the demons of his past. A provocative thriller with an exhilarating climax, "Black Water Rising" marks the arrival of an electrifying new talent.
430 pages, Hardcover
First published June 9, 2009
About the author
Attica Locke
10 books2,080 followersAttica Locke is a writer whose first novel, Black Water Rising, was nominated for a 2010 Edgar Award, a 2010 NAACP Image Award, as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was shortlisted for an Orange Prize in the UK.
Attica is also a screenwriter who has written movie and television scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, HBO, Dreamworks and Silver Pictures. She was also a fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Lab and is a graduate of Northwestern University.
A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.
Attica is also a screenwriter who has written movie and television scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, HBO, Dreamworks and Silver Pictures. She was also a fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Lab and is a graduate of Northwestern University.
A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,134 reviews
June 27, 2021
Until time travel becomes widespread, I recommend Black Water Rising, a historical mystery that marked the publishing debut of Attica Locke in 2009. Neither the story or the dialogue enthralled me straight away, skirting so close to reality that it feels more like eyewitness news reporting than storytelling, like a Texas Monthly article from the '80s. But as the novel unfolded and the uncanny details of another place, time and experience began to unravel, I was transported somewhere else. Only time will tell whether this story will leave a lasting emotional mark on me personally, but the vision dispelled between the pages lingers.
Houston, Texas in 1981. Jay Porter is an attorney who's scraping by, with clients comping him in favors rather than paying his legal fees. Determined to do something nicer for his wife Bernie on her birthday than buying her a bathrobe, Jay arranges for a moonlit cruise on Buffalo Bayou. The brown waterway is too putrid to have ever been developed and the raggedy boat they're on can't even turn around in it. Just as Bernie, pregnant with the couple's first child, begins to appreciate Jay's thought, they hear two gunshots and a woman's scream. When a white woman crashes through the brush and sinks into the murk, Jay rescues her.
Unable or unwilling to speak, the woman unnerves Jay by the danger she poses to him should she start involving him in whatever business she's mixed up in. He drops her off at the police station and ignores Bernie's pleas that he go in to make a statement. Monday, he's in civil court, seeking damages on behalf of his client, an escort who was injured when her date--a port commissioner and former city councilman--crashed them into a telephone pole. Jay's opponent is Charlie Luckman, a defense attorney who came close to being elected D.A. and knows every power broker in Houston. Charlie calls Jay's bluff and refuses to settle for a jackpot he knows Jay needs.
It didn't start out this way. One of his first cases out of law school was a police brutality lawsuit against the city. A rookie cop had allegedly roughed up a sixteen-year-old black kid who was nervous and fumbling for his license. Jay took the case pro bono, going head to head with the city attorney, a white man who had at least a decade of litigation experience over Jay. But Jay had, in so many ways, been preparing for that trial his whole life. His own legal troubles were not so far behind his mind. He remembered what it was like to sit at a defense table, remembered what it felt like to have his basic civil liberties up for debate. The anger was still with him then. And he let it guide him the whole way. He went after the cop with a vengeance, making the poor man stand in for everything that was wrong with a country and a government that applied the law willy-nilly. By closing arguments, half the jury was nodding along to his every other word and Jay won the case.
Jay is summoned by his father-in-law, the Reverend Boykins. Tension at the Port of Houston between the white International Longshoreman's Association and the black Brotherhood of Longshoremen over whether to strike for equality has resulted in a teenaged union brother being beaten by three white men. Fanning the flames is Kwame Mackalvy, a community activist and schoolmate of Jay's from the University of Houston in the early '70s who envisions a lawsuit. The reverend hopes that Jay can get the black union police protection by reaching out to another name from his school days: Cynthia Maddox, the mayor of Houston and first woman to hold the office. Jay remains dubious.
In the Chronicle, Jay reads about a white male shot twice in the 400 block of Clinton, in Fifth Ward, not far from the bayou. No name, but mention is made of a female acquaintance questioned. Jay stumbles around the crime scene and confirms that it's the spot on the bayou where the white woman fell in. Spotted by a groundskeeper, Jay grows paranoid over the trail he might have left for the authorities, or whoever. In college, he was an organizer for SNCC and was tried for inciting a riot and conspiracy to commit murder of a federal informant. Jay's then girlfriend, who he met when she started showing up to SNCC meetings, promptly disappeared after his arrest. Her name was Cynthia Maddox.
Jay is busy trying to track down a witness in his hooker/ port commissioner car crash and put food on the table. When the home of a black longshoreman is shot up, his father-in-law again pleads for Jay to speak to the mayor about getting police protection for the Brotherhood. Jay is preoccupied that the boat pilot on the night of the bayou incident might have mentioned his name or his wife's to the police. He discovers that the pilot died of a cardiac arrest after driving his car into a ditch. Jay begins to notice the same black Ford LTD in his rearview mirror and ponders a connection. Meanwhile, he agrees to deliver a message to his ex-lover in City Hall.
He doesn't remember when he stopped loving her, or when exactly he started. They never called it anything or gave it a name. In the beginning she was just a scruffy kid who started coming around to meetings. He was the one who had been appointed to tell her, as forcefully as need be, to stop. They didn't want her help. Her political awakening was on her own time, not theirs. Besides, in those days, the sisters were still frying chicken and going on beer runs for the meetings, walking ten feet behind the men at campus marches. If the brothers hadn't run her off, the sisters surely would have. No way a white girl was gon' get in line first.
Black Water Rising is a debut novel in name only. Attica Locke, a native Houstonian, spent twelve plus years working as a heavily in demand screenwriter with one credit--an episode of CBS' Early Edition starring Kyle Chandler in 1999--to show for it. It's hard not to feel the influence of one of the greatest original screenplays ever written, Chinatown by Robert Towne, on her novel, which instead of water and real estate for its mystery draws on the assets of the Bayou City: oil and port labor. There's something of a doomed romance between Jay and Cynthia that isn't quite cinematic, but did strike me as deep, complicated and believable.
Detective story flourishes are all over the book, from crooked officers to power brokers to hookers to Jay's ace in the hole, a bar owner and former client named Rolly Snow who fancies himself a private dick and can find almost anyone. What sets Black Water Rising apart is the beast of racial injustice. Jay is filled with antipathy over outliving his father, who was beaten to death in their small East Texas town of Nigton while Jay was still in the womb, over being followed, wiretapped and set up by the government and over his predisposition for keeping his mouth shut. Philip Marlowe thought he had a rough go.
Disclaimer: My ardor for this novel has much to do with growing up in Houston at the same time as the author. Her use of Buffalo Bayou as a plot catalyst, of Houston's first female mayor Kathy Whitmire as source material and Gilley's as a location where Jay is not warmly welcomed were all a delight to explore. Buildings, neighborhoods and radio are described in a way that made them seem more real to me than those of my memory, and introduces much in the way of what the city was like in the turbulent early '70s that I did not know. The novel does pack a lot of detail with little titillation, but kept me involved and eager to read the author's followup.
Houston, Texas in 1981. Jay Porter is an attorney who's scraping by, with clients comping him in favors rather than paying his legal fees. Determined to do something nicer for his wife Bernie on her birthday than buying her a bathrobe, Jay arranges for a moonlit cruise on Buffalo Bayou. The brown waterway is too putrid to have ever been developed and the raggedy boat they're on can't even turn around in it. Just as Bernie, pregnant with the couple's first child, begins to appreciate Jay's thought, they hear two gunshots and a woman's scream. When a white woman crashes through the brush and sinks into the murk, Jay rescues her.
Unable or unwilling to speak, the woman unnerves Jay by the danger she poses to him should she start involving him in whatever business she's mixed up in. He drops her off at the police station and ignores Bernie's pleas that he go in to make a statement. Monday, he's in civil court, seeking damages on behalf of his client, an escort who was injured when her date--a port commissioner and former city councilman--crashed them into a telephone pole. Jay's opponent is Charlie Luckman, a defense attorney who came close to being elected D.A. and knows every power broker in Houston. Charlie calls Jay's bluff and refuses to settle for a jackpot he knows Jay needs.
It didn't start out this way. One of his first cases out of law school was a police brutality lawsuit against the city. A rookie cop had allegedly roughed up a sixteen-year-old black kid who was nervous and fumbling for his license. Jay took the case pro bono, going head to head with the city attorney, a white man who had at least a decade of litigation experience over Jay. But Jay had, in so many ways, been preparing for that trial his whole life. His own legal troubles were not so far behind his mind. He remembered what it was like to sit at a defense table, remembered what it felt like to have his basic civil liberties up for debate. The anger was still with him then. And he let it guide him the whole way. He went after the cop with a vengeance, making the poor man stand in for everything that was wrong with a country and a government that applied the law willy-nilly. By closing arguments, half the jury was nodding along to his every other word and Jay won the case.
Jay is summoned by his father-in-law, the Reverend Boykins. Tension at the Port of Houston between the white International Longshoreman's Association and the black Brotherhood of Longshoremen over whether to strike for equality has resulted in a teenaged union brother being beaten by three white men. Fanning the flames is Kwame Mackalvy, a community activist and schoolmate of Jay's from the University of Houston in the early '70s who envisions a lawsuit. The reverend hopes that Jay can get the black union police protection by reaching out to another name from his school days: Cynthia Maddox, the mayor of Houston and first woman to hold the office. Jay remains dubious.
In the Chronicle, Jay reads about a white male shot twice in the 400 block of Clinton, in Fifth Ward, not far from the bayou. No name, but mention is made of a female acquaintance questioned. Jay stumbles around the crime scene and confirms that it's the spot on the bayou where the white woman fell in. Spotted by a groundskeeper, Jay grows paranoid over the trail he might have left for the authorities, or whoever. In college, he was an organizer for SNCC and was tried for inciting a riot and conspiracy to commit murder of a federal informant. Jay's then girlfriend, who he met when she started showing up to SNCC meetings, promptly disappeared after his arrest. Her name was Cynthia Maddox.
Jay is busy trying to track down a witness in his hooker/ port commissioner car crash and put food on the table. When the home of a black longshoreman is shot up, his father-in-law again pleads for Jay to speak to the mayor about getting police protection for the Brotherhood. Jay is preoccupied that the boat pilot on the night of the bayou incident might have mentioned his name or his wife's to the police. He discovers that the pilot died of a cardiac arrest after driving his car into a ditch. Jay begins to notice the same black Ford LTD in his rearview mirror and ponders a connection. Meanwhile, he agrees to deliver a message to his ex-lover in City Hall.
He doesn't remember when he stopped loving her, or when exactly he started. They never called it anything or gave it a name. In the beginning she was just a scruffy kid who started coming around to meetings. He was the one who had been appointed to tell her, as forcefully as need be, to stop. They didn't want her help. Her political awakening was on her own time, not theirs. Besides, in those days, the sisters were still frying chicken and going on beer runs for the meetings, walking ten feet behind the men at campus marches. If the brothers hadn't run her off, the sisters surely would have. No way a white girl was gon' get in line first.
Black Water Rising is a debut novel in name only. Attica Locke, a native Houstonian, spent twelve plus years working as a heavily in demand screenwriter with one credit--an episode of CBS' Early Edition starring Kyle Chandler in 1999--to show for it. It's hard not to feel the influence of one of the greatest original screenplays ever written, Chinatown by Robert Towne, on her novel, which instead of water and real estate for its mystery draws on the assets of the Bayou City: oil and port labor. There's something of a doomed romance between Jay and Cynthia that isn't quite cinematic, but did strike me as deep, complicated and believable.
Detective story flourishes are all over the book, from crooked officers to power brokers to hookers to Jay's ace in the hole, a bar owner and former client named Rolly Snow who fancies himself a private dick and can find almost anyone. What sets Black Water Rising apart is the beast of racial injustice. Jay is filled with antipathy over outliving his father, who was beaten to death in their small East Texas town of Nigton while Jay was still in the womb, over being followed, wiretapped and set up by the government and over his predisposition for keeping his mouth shut. Philip Marlowe thought he had a rough go.
Disclaimer: My ardor for this novel has much to do with growing up in Houston at the same time as the author. Her use of Buffalo Bayou as a plot catalyst, of Houston's first female mayor Kathy Whitmire as source material and Gilley's as a location where Jay is not warmly welcomed were all a delight to explore. Buildings, neighborhoods and radio are described in a way that made them seem more real to me than those of my memory, and introduces much in the way of what the city was like in the turbulent early '70s that I did not know. The novel does pack a lot of detail with little titillation, but kept me involved and eager to read the author's followup.
February 5, 2017
Is this my first great crime novel read of the year? I think it is.
Black Water Rising is superb. Set in Houston in the early eighties, it begins when Jay Porter--a struggling ambulance-chaser and traumatized former idealist--takes his wife, Bernie, on a late-night boat ride through the bayou as a birthday present. It isn't going well--the boat he's hired is much shabbier than he was led to believe, and the man he thought would be captaining it has left an untrustworthy cousin in his stead--and then, miraculously, it is: the night is lovely, the refreshments seem to pull everything together, and Jay maybe has a win on his hands. Then they hear a struggle and some gunshots and Jay rescues a white woman from the water. Obviously they should call the police, but the boat's temporary captain doesn't have a license and Jay, whose civil rights activism in college once angered authorities enough to have him arrested on trumped-up charges, is likewise leery. They settle for dropping the woman off in front of the police station, where she can walk in... or not.
This kicks off a tangled but naturally-unfurling set of complications both past and present, as the mystery around that night seems to uneasily begin to coalesce with Houston's oil-driven economy, racial tensions, and ambitious mayor. Even the flashbacks--and I am generally an avowed enemy of flashbacks--are well-done and significant, showing us Jay as a passionate and charismatic student leader and crusader for justice. Those qualities are still there within him, even if they've been buried by justified paranoia and cautiousness, and Black Water Rising is in part a novel-length struggle over whether or not Jay's actions in the present will bring him back to the values of his past. And that's in addition to wondering whether or not his one-time girlfriend (now also his mayor) sold him out to the cops and trying to figure out what happened that night on the boat--and what happened to get to that.
Locke does an excellent job revealing the solution to her mystery in stages, and even if you can guess the nature of it--and with historical perspective, you probably can--you probably can't quite guess the ins-and-outs of it or the ramifications it will have for Jay, for whom the stakes are high. That same smoothness--and even that same sense of suspense--is replicated in the prose itself, which is evocative but unshowy:
Monday mornings at the civil courthouse are usually slow going. The place lacks the focus or feeling of purpose of the criminal courthouse, a building that practically crackles with the electric energy of righteous indignation, a feeling running under everything, even the most mundane office tasks, that something huge is at stake. There are murderers and rapists in the hallways, crooks and thieves roaming the building; there are handcuffs and officers with guns. The spectacle alone is enough to fill everyone with a sense of heroic purpose, or at least a heated feeling of excitement. In a civil courtroom, there is only one thing at stake: money. Questions of right or wrong, who did what to whom, are stripped of their morality here and reduced to a numerical equation. What is your pain worth? What's the going rate for sorrow? If it's not your money or pain that's at stake, it's kind of hard to get too fired up about the proceedings, nor do they draw much of a crowd.
Debut novels can be rough and debut crime novels can be rougher, can sometimes get out into the world with weak writing as long as they have a good hook. Black Water Rising has sophisticated storytelling and a polished style and it's almost impossible to believe it was Locke's first published novel. (She's also a veteran scriptwriter, but the talents aren't always the same: clearly she's good at both.) And Black Water Rising was blurbed by Ellroy and Pelecanos. I can't believe it took me this long to read it, but at least my unconscionable delay means I have two other novels of hers waiting for me.
Black Water Rising is superb. Set in Houston in the early eighties, it begins when Jay Porter--a struggling ambulance-chaser and traumatized former idealist--takes his wife, Bernie, on a late-night boat ride through the bayou as a birthday present. It isn't going well--the boat he's hired is much shabbier than he was led to believe, and the man he thought would be captaining it has left an untrustworthy cousin in his stead--and then, miraculously, it is: the night is lovely, the refreshments seem to pull everything together, and Jay maybe has a win on his hands. Then they hear a struggle and some gunshots and Jay rescues a white woman from the water. Obviously they should call the police, but the boat's temporary captain doesn't have a license and Jay, whose civil rights activism in college once angered authorities enough to have him arrested on trumped-up charges, is likewise leery. They settle for dropping the woman off in front of the police station, where she can walk in... or not.
This kicks off a tangled but naturally-unfurling set of complications both past and present, as the mystery around that night seems to uneasily begin to coalesce with Houston's oil-driven economy, racial tensions, and ambitious mayor. Even the flashbacks--and I am generally an avowed enemy of flashbacks--are well-done and significant, showing us Jay as a passionate and charismatic student leader and crusader for justice. Those qualities are still there within him, even if they've been buried by justified paranoia and cautiousness, and Black Water Rising is in part a novel-length struggle over whether or not Jay's actions in the present will bring him back to the values of his past. And that's in addition to wondering whether or not his one-time girlfriend (now also his mayor) sold him out to the cops and trying to figure out what happened that night on the boat--and what happened to get to that.
Locke does an excellent job revealing the solution to her mystery in stages, and even if you can guess the nature of it--and with historical perspective, you probably can--you probably can't quite guess the ins-and-outs of it or the ramifications it will have for Jay, for whom the stakes are high. That same smoothness--and even that same sense of suspense--is replicated in the prose itself, which is evocative but unshowy:
Monday mornings at the civil courthouse are usually slow going. The place lacks the focus or feeling of purpose of the criminal courthouse, a building that practically crackles with the electric energy of righteous indignation, a feeling running under everything, even the most mundane office tasks, that something huge is at stake. There are murderers and rapists in the hallways, crooks and thieves roaming the building; there are handcuffs and officers with guns. The spectacle alone is enough to fill everyone with a sense of heroic purpose, or at least a heated feeling of excitement. In a civil courtroom, there is only one thing at stake: money. Questions of right or wrong, who did what to whom, are stripped of their morality here and reduced to a numerical equation. What is your pain worth? What's the going rate for sorrow? If it's not your money or pain that's at stake, it's kind of hard to get too fired up about the proceedings, nor do they draw much of a crowd.
Debut novels can be rough and debut crime novels can be rougher, can sometimes get out into the world with weak writing as long as they have a good hook. Black Water Rising has sophisticated storytelling and a polished style and it's almost impossible to believe it was Locke's first published novel. (She's also a veteran scriptwriter, but the talents aren't always the same: clearly she's good at both.) And Black Water Rising was blurbed by Ellroy and Pelecanos. I can't believe it took me this long to read it, but at least my unconscionable delay means I have two other novels of hers waiting for me.
February 5, 2021
4.5 Stars
Man! This book was great!
Black Water Rising has everything; Murder, sex, government corruption, environmental justice, racism and labor relations.
The synopsis on the book jacket doesnt even begin to cover what this book is. Attica Locke's ability to write a completely realistic world is astonishing. I truly felt like I had been dropped into summer in 1980's Houston. Despite reading while it was snowing outside my window, I completely felt the oppressive heat of this book. I could smell the sweaty atmosphere.
Y'all need to stop sleeping on Attica Locke! Read this book!
Man! This book was great!
Black Water Rising has everything; Murder, sex, government corruption, environmental justice, racism and labor relations.
The synopsis on the book jacket doesnt even begin to cover what this book is. Attica Locke's ability to write a completely realistic world is astonishing. I truly felt like I had been dropped into summer in 1980's Houston. Despite reading while it was snowing outside my window, I completely felt the oppressive heat of this book. I could smell the sweaty atmosphere.
Y'all need to stop sleeping on Attica Locke! Read this book!
October 19, 2020
You know when you take that first step forward energized by plain ol' impulse......things will not always work out in your favor.
All Jay Porter wanted was a special night out to celebrate his pregnant wife's birthday. As a sometimes active, and most times inactive, lawyer in a strip mall, Jay's options were limited. Why not a late night cruise on Buffalo Bayou with the one you love? But once they pull up near the dock, the dilapidated boat with an even more dilapidated captain soured the prospects in a heartbeat. Bea pondered if making the effort to get out of the car with an eighth month cargo was what she had in mind.
But once underway and a cabin filled with party balloons, Bea and Jay relax and feel the breeze refreshing them. All of a sudden they hear a loud scream and gunshots ringing in the darkness. Turning around and going back is not an option in this narrow neck of the bayou. Jay cannot hold back any longer and plunges into the murkiness of the putrid water. He saves a white woman from whatever was out there. And she's not talkin'. They later drop her off at a police station nearby. Jay just can't afford to get involved. Have mercy, Jay. It's just far too late 'bout now......
Attica Locke creates a multi-tiered, draw you in, complicated mystery/thriller surrounded in the likes of Houston in 1981. As a Texan, I'm feelin' it already. We've got present crimes, past crimes, oil as king, potential strikes, hardcore civil rights issues, and a very pregnant wife in the midst of nesting. Locke stacks the deck high here. And in addition, she gives us a multitude of backstories involving Jay and his early years trying to find his way in a way complicated biased world.
Black Water Rising is quite an undertaking by Attica Locke. But she has the writing chops to pull it off. Just check out the honorable awards for this one. Yet, some of the material could have been saved for a pre-quel of sorts or inserted in a later novel. But don't let that scare you off.
Do yourself a favor and check out Bluebird, Bluebird and Heaven My Home both set in Texas as well. We need to hear more from this very talented author. Hope you're listening, Ms. Locke.
All Jay Porter wanted was a special night out to celebrate his pregnant wife's birthday. As a sometimes active, and most times inactive, lawyer in a strip mall, Jay's options were limited. Why not a late night cruise on Buffalo Bayou with the one you love? But once they pull up near the dock, the dilapidated boat with an even more dilapidated captain soured the prospects in a heartbeat. Bea pondered if making the effort to get out of the car with an eighth month cargo was what she had in mind.
But once underway and a cabin filled with party balloons, Bea and Jay relax and feel the breeze refreshing them. All of a sudden they hear a loud scream and gunshots ringing in the darkness. Turning around and going back is not an option in this narrow neck of the bayou. Jay cannot hold back any longer and plunges into the murkiness of the putrid water. He saves a white woman from whatever was out there. And she's not talkin'. They later drop her off at a police station nearby. Jay just can't afford to get involved. Have mercy, Jay. It's just far too late 'bout now......
Attica Locke creates a multi-tiered, draw you in, complicated mystery/thriller surrounded in the likes of Houston in 1981. As a Texan, I'm feelin' it already. We've got present crimes, past crimes, oil as king, potential strikes, hardcore civil rights issues, and a very pregnant wife in the midst of nesting. Locke stacks the deck high here. And in addition, she gives us a multitude of backstories involving Jay and his early years trying to find his way in a way complicated biased world.
Black Water Rising is quite an undertaking by Attica Locke. But she has the writing chops to pull it off. Just check out the honorable awards for this one. Yet, some of the material could have been saved for a pre-quel of sorts or inserted in a later novel. But don't let that scare you off.
Do yourself a favor and check out Bluebird, Bluebird and Heaven My Home both set in Texas as well. We need to hear more from this very talented author. Hope you're listening, Ms. Locke.
March 23, 2023
I very much enjoyed the textured approach Locke brought to the creation of many of her characters, especially her protagonist, and the authentic feel she brought to her depiction of early-80’s boomtown Houston. The pacing was a bit all over the place, and the plotting could have been a bit more elegantly threaded together, but I was still taken in by her thoughtful, measured, prose, and her thorny, complex themes. I look forward to reading more of her work.
February 9, 2016
3.75 stars. Not quite as good as Pleasantville. There were a few civil rights history sections that slowed the plotline for me. Otherwise, she's a wonderful author.
October 4, 2022
3.5 stars - The writing in this is just *chef's kiss*. So evocative, so immersive! I wasn't totally sold on the mystery/suspense plot itself (it felt very Grisham-esque, and that's just not my go-to), but this is a slow burning noir tale of racial injustice, political dealing, and reconciling your past with your present
March 13, 2011
In this adroit debut thriller, Attica Locke delivers the goods with an understated and assured confidence. The cadence, as well as the story, is brisk and balanced. She avoids the pitfalls of many debut authors, i.e. the prose is not self-conscious or cloying, and the story develops with a natural ease. Her sentences are a joy to read, as they are poised, with a sense of the poetic, and well scrubbed. This is a novel with political overtones and racial conflicts; however, Locke executes her narrative without pounding in the polemics or preaching to the choir. In this restrained and mostly character driven story, the corporate controversies develop with a refined intelligence, building with a controlled and subdued temperance. Moreover, Locke paints a keen portrait of Houston's Third Ward of 1981, a place where political activism in the African American community has declined since its days of Carl Hampton and the Black Panther activism of the 70's, as many black business owners and homeowners have moved to the suburbs.
Jay Porter is a young, thirtyish lawyer with a very pregnant wife, Bernie, living in the Third Ward and trying to pave a career. He has a tenebrous past that is revealed gradually within the arc of the story. At the beginning, we know he feels clouded and frustrated with how his career and life is unfolding, and there is a palpable tension between Jay and his wife. He tries, on her birthday, to surprise her with a boat ride on Buffalo Bayou in Houston. What stars off as a romantic quest turns into an uninvited adventure, as Jay saves a drowning woman and gets pulled into a quagmire of murder and dirty politics. Things get murkier as Bernie's father, a respected Reverend, beseeches Jay to get involved with the looming strike of the longshoreman dock workers. Although Jay was an activist for black power and equality in his college days, he does not want to get involved with this racially divided conflict. "This is not my fight," he murmurs over and over to himself. "This has nothing to do with me."
The thorny history of the Third and Fifth Wards, as well as Houston's power boom of the 70's and early 80's, informs Locke's superb story of human politics. She weaves Jay's past into the present with a lyrical control and economy of words, creating page-turning tension for the reader. This isn't about dead bodies piling up or gratuitous shoot-outs with larger-than-life characters. The characters in Locke's story are authentic, conflicted, and wholly believable. Jay's fight to provide for and protect his family and to forge a meaningful life are the gripping forces of this novel.
Locke skillfully blends the Houston climate and geography into the mood of the characters and the action of the story. The tone is pitch-perfect and the events progress with a measured intensity. Locke's gift for character and narrative kept me fastened to the novel from the arresting opening pages to its credible and transitional end. I eagerly look forward to her next novel. BLACK WATER RISING is distinctly open for a follow-up.
Jay Porter is a young, thirtyish lawyer with a very pregnant wife, Bernie, living in the Third Ward and trying to pave a career. He has a tenebrous past that is revealed gradually within the arc of the story. At the beginning, we know he feels clouded and frustrated with how his career and life is unfolding, and there is a palpable tension between Jay and his wife. He tries, on her birthday, to surprise her with a boat ride on Buffalo Bayou in Houston. What stars off as a romantic quest turns into an uninvited adventure, as Jay saves a drowning woman and gets pulled into a quagmire of murder and dirty politics. Things get murkier as Bernie's father, a respected Reverend, beseeches Jay to get involved with the looming strike of the longshoreman dock workers. Although Jay was an activist for black power and equality in his college days, he does not want to get involved with this racially divided conflict. "This is not my fight," he murmurs over and over to himself. "This has nothing to do with me."
The thorny history of the Third and Fifth Wards, as well as Houston's power boom of the 70's and early 80's, informs Locke's superb story of human politics. She weaves Jay's past into the present with a lyrical control and economy of words, creating page-turning tension for the reader. This isn't about dead bodies piling up or gratuitous shoot-outs with larger-than-life characters. The characters in Locke's story are authentic, conflicted, and wholly believable. Jay's fight to provide for and protect his family and to forge a meaningful life are the gripping forces of this novel.
Locke skillfully blends the Houston climate and geography into the mood of the characters and the action of the story. The tone is pitch-perfect and the events progress with a measured intensity. Locke's gift for character and narrative kept me fastened to the novel from the arresting opening pages to its credible and transitional end. I eagerly look forward to her next novel. BLACK WATER RISING is distinctly open for a follow-up.
April 23, 2010
There aren't very many African American mystery writers out there, so this novel was a welcome surprise. The author really did her research. The plot was well executed, with tidbits of historical relevance that helped set the stage. The main character, a tortured soul, complex and yet compelling, has checked out of life for the most part just going through the motions from one day to the next. Wake, work, wife, wake, work, wife. Shaky family foundations, married, but unable to trust his pregnant wife, unrewarding job and unresolved issues from his past to include an unresolved relationship that almost landed him in jail. These things continue to haunt him. With apprehension, he helps a distressed women out on the bayou that starts a chain of events that changes his life forever. Ultimately, he has to choose whether to stay checked out or get involved. A mix of themes that include mystery, suspense, historical events, civil rights & equality, mutiracial dating, betrayal & greed, reinvention and Texas oil reserves-- that may be 50 or so pages too long, but is still well worth the read. It hits its peak more than halfway and then coasts until the end. Very fast and easy read that is well worth it.
March 3, 2012
This murder-mystery-thriller novel provides a portrayal of 1980s Houston, Texas through the eyes of a young African American lawyer who has a past history of involvement in the black power movement of the late 60s. It is one man's personal journey told through flashbacks of past experiences intermixed with the current story that occurs during the Reagan administration of the 1980s. The time may be post civil rights legislation, but racial feelings are still raw. From the perspective of the main character, all whites (including the police) are bad, dangerous, threatening or untrustworthy people. Thus this book provides a virtual window for white readers into the black experience of dealing with structural racism supported by moneyed power structures. (I'm not qualified to speculate on the experience of the black reader.)
It's interesting to note the parts of the story that remind the reader of the time and place being described. One clue is the lingering aftermath of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo and the beginning indications of the 80s oil glut. Another 1980s fact of life is that it seems that everybody is smoking in offices and public places. (Amazing we didn't all die of second hand smoke.) Also, nobody has a cell phone. (Life was so dangerous then with no cell phones to call for help when needed.)
This is a well written mystery that keeps the reader guessing along with the protagonist. I liked the way the author managed to haunt the current story with flashbacks to parallel stories from the past. I also liked its ending that included the aspect of hope, but remained short of a "happily ever after" conclusion. (Much more realistic that way.)
I heard the author speak about the book at the KC Plaza Library on March 21, 2012.
It's interesting to note the parts of the story that remind the reader of the time and place being described. One clue is the lingering aftermath of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo and the beginning indications of the 80s oil glut. Another 1980s fact of life is that it seems that everybody is smoking in offices and public places. (Amazing we didn't all die of second hand smoke.) Also, nobody has a cell phone. (Life was so dangerous then with no cell phones to call for help when needed.)
This is a well written mystery that keeps the reader guessing along with the protagonist. I liked the way the author managed to haunt the current story with flashbacks to parallel stories from the past. I also liked its ending that included the aspect of hope, but remained short of a "happily ever after" conclusion. (Much more realistic that way.)
I heard the author speak about the book at the KC Plaza Library on March 21, 2012.
March 25, 2019
This dragged in a few places but overall I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.
Jay is a former member of SNCC who gets frustrated and forms a Black Panther style Black Liberation group in the 70's. COINTELPRO begins to convict his friends on trumped up charges, out right murdering Fred Hamilton.
Jay is arrested, beats his charge and goes to law school. 10 years later he's noticing that the few comrades of his that slipped through the government's fingers are still being watched.
Into this tension drops a chance encounter that is much more than it appears on the surface.
Jay is a former member of SNCC who gets frustrated and forms a Black Panther style Black Liberation group in the 70's. COINTELPRO begins to convict his friends on trumped up charges, out right murdering Fred Hamilton.
Jay is arrested, beats his charge and goes to law school. 10 years later he's noticing that the few comrades of his that slipped through the government's fingers are still being watched.
Into this tension drops a chance encounter that is much more than it appears on the surface.
June 24, 2018
A good read that felt realistic. I'll be reading more from her. Review to come.
April 29, 2015
Excellent. Would recommend to anyone. Try to listen to it. It is read by Dion Graham and he is the best! I would put this book into my category as one I would not like to listen too because the writing is so very good. But, again, Graham is great. I didn't not give it 5 stars because I reserve that for my favorite books. This comes very close.
June 22, 2020
I read Attica Locke's acclaimed book, Bluebird, Bluebird, in 2017 and promised myself that I would read more. Finally, with Black Water Rising, I'm beginning to fulfill that promise to myself.
This book is actually Locke's first published novel. It came out in 2009 and was nominated for all sorts of awards including the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. The book is set in Locke's hometown of Houston, Texas in 1981. We moved here a few years later and I can attest that her references to places in the city and to the culture and attitudes of the place in the 1980s ring true.
Houston in 1981 was growing fast. Too fast. The city was built on a base of oil and the oil "barons" had virtually free rein in it. It was a city where a lot of people were trying to make a new start in their lives. Among them was Jay Porter.
Porter was an African-American lawyer with a fledgling practice that he ran out of a dingy strip mall. His clients are mostly poor and barely able to pay him, if at all. His most promising case at the moment involves a prostitute who is suing her john.
It's not exactly the legal practice Porter had dreamed of in his college days as a civil rights activist, but now he's married, with a wife almost ready to deliver their first child. He's made his peace for the moment with his dreams of glory and is just trying to get by and support and protect his family.
Porter had been born in an East Texas town called Nigton where he had learned a valuable lesson:
He had abandoned that strategy somewhat as a college student at the University of Houston, where he had been active in the civil rights movement and had rubbed shoulders with people like Stokely Carmichael and Huey Newton. But as a lawyer, he had other priorities:
While at the University of Houston, he had also rubbed shoulders and other parts of the body with another UH student named Cynthia Maddox. When Jay was arrested and charged with a felony, it had ruptured their relationship. He was acquitted, but Cynthia had abandoned him. Now she is the mayor of Houston, the first woman to hold that position. (Kathy Whitmire was, in fact, the first woman to be elected to that position and that was in the 1980s.)
Jay wants to do something special for his wife for her birthday and he settles on a (he hopes) romantic nighttime barge trip on Buffalo Bayou. The plan goes reasonably well until on the way back they hear two gunshots and a woman's scream and then a splash as something large hits the waters of the bayou. They can hear someone struggling in the muck and Bernie, the wife, insists that Jay go into the black waters to help. He can't say no so he strips off and jumps in, finds a woman struggling in the water, and brings her to the barge. She is a White woman who is clearly uneasy as she views the three Black people, including the captain, on the barge, but they get her to shore and again Bernie insists that they take her to the police station. They leave her there on the steps of the station as Jay drives very slowly and carefully away, making sure he obeys all traffic laws.
Meantime, there is tension brewing between the Black Brotherhood of Longshoremen and the White International Longshoremen's Association over whether to strike for equality of pay and treatment. The tension bursts into flame when a teenage member of the Black group is brutally beaten by three White men. Jay's father-in-law, Reverend Boykins, requests his help. He wants him to reach out to the mayor to try to bring peace between the two groups. Jay is reluctant but it is impossible to refuse the man who is the closest thing to a father that he has.
The author skillfully develops these parallel tracks of her plot until we finally are able to see connections. Those connections all lead back to the power structure, the real power structure, of the city.
Attica Locke had me from the first paragraph of this book. She made palpable for me the fear and anxiety that are an integral part of the Black male's (or female's, for that matter) interactions with the police. We know only too well that those interactions in American society are fraught with inequality and, too often, a lack of respect on the part of the police. And too often they end in tragedy.
And how do we reach that Utopia of equality? I give you the Reverend Boykins:
Maybe we just have to accept each other as we are, realizing that we all bleed the same color red, and start from there.
This book is actually Locke's first published novel. It came out in 2009 and was nominated for all sorts of awards including the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. The book is set in Locke's hometown of Houston, Texas in 1981. We moved here a few years later and I can attest that her references to places in the city and to the culture and attitudes of the place in the 1980s ring true.
Houston in 1981 was growing fast. Too fast. The city was built on a base of oil and the oil "barons" had virtually free rein in it. It was a city where a lot of people were trying to make a new start in their lives. Among them was Jay Porter.
Porter was an African-American lawyer with a fledgling practice that he ran out of a dingy strip mall. His clients are mostly poor and barely able to pay him, if at all. His most promising case at the moment involves a prostitute who is suing her john.
It's not exactly the legal practice Porter had dreamed of in his college days as a civil rights activist, but now he's married, with a wife almost ready to deliver their first child. He's made his peace for the moment with his dreams of glory and is just trying to get by and support and protect his family.
Porter had been born in an East Texas town called Nigton where he had learned a valuable lesson:
“Keep your head down, speak only when spoken to. A warning drilled into him every day of his life growing up in Nigton, Texas, née Nig Town, née Nigger Town (its true birth name when it sprang up a hundred years ago in the piney woods of East Texas).”
He had abandoned that strategy somewhat as a college student at the University of Houston, where he had been active in the civil rights movement and had rubbed shoulders with people like Stokely Carmichael and Huey Newton. But as a lawyer, he had other priorities:
“Practicing law, he would soon find out, is like running any other small business. Most days he’s just trying to make his overhead: insurance and filing fees, Eddie Mae’s meager salary, plus $500 a month to lease the furnished office space on West Gray. He, quite frankly, can’t afford his principles.”
While at the University of Houston, he had also rubbed shoulders and other parts of the body with another UH student named Cynthia Maddox. When Jay was arrested and charged with a felony, it had ruptured their relationship. He was acquitted, but Cynthia had abandoned him. Now she is the mayor of Houston, the first woman to hold that position. (Kathy Whitmire was, in fact, the first woman to be elected to that position and that was in the 1980s.)
Jay wants to do something special for his wife for her birthday and he settles on a (he hopes) romantic nighttime barge trip on Buffalo Bayou. The plan goes reasonably well until on the way back they hear two gunshots and a woman's scream and then a splash as something large hits the waters of the bayou. They can hear someone struggling in the muck and Bernie, the wife, insists that Jay go into the black waters to help. He can't say no so he strips off and jumps in, finds a woman struggling in the water, and brings her to the barge. She is a White woman who is clearly uneasy as she views the three Black people, including the captain, on the barge, but they get her to shore and again Bernie insists that they take her to the police station. They leave her there on the steps of the station as Jay drives very slowly and carefully away, making sure he obeys all traffic laws.
Meantime, there is tension brewing between the Black Brotherhood of Longshoremen and the White International Longshoremen's Association over whether to strike for equality of pay and treatment. The tension bursts into flame when a teenage member of the Black group is brutally beaten by three White men. Jay's father-in-law, Reverend Boykins, requests his help. He wants him to reach out to the mayor to try to bring peace between the two groups. Jay is reluctant but it is impossible to refuse the man who is the closest thing to a father that he has.
The author skillfully develops these parallel tracks of her plot until we finally are able to see connections. Those connections all lead back to the power structure, the real power structure, of the city.
Attica Locke had me from the first paragraph of this book. She made palpable for me the fear and anxiety that are an integral part of the Black male's (or female's, for that matter) interactions with the police. We know only too well that those interactions in American society are fraught with inequality and, too often, a lack of respect on the part of the police. And too often they end in tragedy.
And how do we reach that Utopia of equality? I give you the Reverend Boykins:
“Rev says, “pretending people aren’t black is not the way to equality. It’s not even possible, first of all. Any more than I can pretend you aren’t who you are.”
Maybe we just have to accept each other as we are, realizing that we all bleed the same color red, and start from there.
May 20, 2017
This was a debut novel for Locke, immersing us in the racial politics of Houston in the 1980s.
At the center of this story is Jay Porter, a struggling black lawyer who is awaiting his first child and who has a troubled past as a civil rights activist who was betrayed by some internal snitches. On a steamy evening, he takes his wife Bernie for a low-rent cruise along the bayou that bisects the booming oil city, and when they are almost done, they hear gunshots and a woman's cry for help. Soon, they are loading a young white woman onto the boat, and they later drop her at a police station.
Paranoid from his previous brushes with the law, Porter does not go to the police with what happened, sure he is likely to become a target. But the case won't leave him alone, because suddenly a mysterious stranger tells him to stay out of the case. Of course, Porter won't, and that leads him into an increasingly murky and harrowing investigation of why the woman he rescued was involved in a shooting death.
In the meantime, his father in law talks him into representing a young African American dock worker who has been beat up during labor strife among the longshoremen, and that provides the book's other subplot, including Porter's past love affair with the woman who is now Houston's mayor.
The book isn't without flaws -- it could have been trimmed, and the bad guy who pursues Porter has an almost Terminator-like ability to keep showing up -- but the characters are complex, the descriptive scenes are rich, and I felt like I got a real taste of this high-danger, high-humidity city. It was also refreshing to see Locke tackle racial prejudice and complexity so honestly.
At the center of this story is Jay Porter, a struggling black lawyer who is awaiting his first child and who has a troubled past as a civil rights activist who was betrayed by some internal snitches. On a steamy evening, he takes his wife Bernie for a low-rent cruise along the bayou that bisects the booming oil city, and when they are almost done, they hear gunshots and a woman's cry for help. Soon, they are loading a young white woman onto the boat, and they later drop her at a police station.
Paranoid from his previous brushes with the law, Porter does not go to the police with what happened, sure he is likely to become a target. But the case won't leave him alone, because suddenly a mysterious stranger tells him to stay out of the case. Of course, Porter won't, and that leads him into an increasingly murky and harrowing investigation of why the woman he rescued was involved in a shooting death.
In the meantime, his father in law talks him into representing a young African American dock worker who has been beat up during labor strife among the longshoremen, and that provides the book's other subplot, including Porter's past love affair with the woman who is now Houston's mayor.
The book isn't without flaws -- it could have been trimmed, and the bad guy who pursues Porter has an almost Terminator-like ability to keep showing up -- but the characters are complex, the descriptive scenes are rich, and I felt like I got a real taste of this high-danger, high-humidity city. It was also refreshing to see Locke tackle racial prejudice and complexity so honestly.
August 17, 2009
good crime mystery.back drop of civilrights movement.
March 18, 2015
Attica Locke is one of those rare thriller writers who not only brings unrelenting action but throws in a hefty side of hard-hitting themes. I don't know that I've ever read another thriller that gave me this much to mull over afterwards. Usually I finish crime novels all like, “That was a fun and interesting diversion. Tra la la,” but not this time.
Locke's main character, attorney Jay Porter, is a complicated and tortured man. As the book opens in 1981, Jay is stable, married, awaiting the arrival of his first child, but his life is about to be thrown into total chaos.
It begins when Jay witnesses a crime he won't fully understand until much later. Most people would go to the police to report what they saw, but Jay is wracked with residual paranoia from his college days, when he was active in the Black Power movement. He narrowly evaded significant prison time then, and he's terrified of getting involved in anything now that could land him back on the wrong side of the law. So he keeps his mouth shut, like he's always done. This time, though, trouble follows Jay as if it were tied to his ankle. He's involved whether he wants to be or not, and he has no idea who he's dealing with or how high up the corruption goes.
There are so many big ideas in this story—the oil industry, environmentalism, workers' rights, civil rights, collective bargaining, industrialization, government spies—it's no wonder it takes over 400 pages for Locke to tell it. What is a surprise is how quickly she makes those pages fly by.
I was fascinated by Jay's character, but I hardly had any time to reflect on his choices and motivations because something exciting was always happening. There are so many jaw-dropping, heart-pumping scenes throughout the book. Usually that's not my thing; I often find myself sighing with boredom and skimming through action-heavy sequences, but not with Black Water Rising. The tension is incredible.
And here's some good news: a second Locke novel, Pleasantville, featuring Jay Porter is scheduled for release April 21! You can bet I've already joined the hold list at my library for that one.
More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com
Locke's main character, attorney Jay Porter, is a complicated and tortured man. As the book opens in 1981, Jay is stable, married, awaiting the arrival of his first child, but his life is about to be thrown into total chaos.
It begins when Jay witnesses a crime he won't fully understand until much later. Most people would go to the police to report what they saw, but Jay is wracked with residual paranoia from his college days, when he was active in the Black Power movement. He narrowly evaded significant prison time then, and he's terrified of getting involved in anything now that could land him back on the wrong side of the law. So he keeps his mouth shut, like he's always done. This time, though, trouble follows Jay as if it were tied to his ankle. He's involved whether he wants to be or not, and he has no idea who he's dealing with or how high up the corruption goes.
There are so many big ideas in this story—the oil industry, environmentalism, workers' rights, civil rights, collective bargaining, industrialization, government spies—it's no wonder it takes over 400 pages for Locke to tell it. What is a surprise is how quickly she makes those pages fly by.
I was fascinated by Jay's character, but I hardly had any time to reflect on his choices and motivations because something exciting was always happening. There are so many jaw-dropping, heart-pumping scenes throughout the book. Usually that's not my thing; I often find myself sighing with boredom and skimming through action-heavy sequences, but not with Black Water Rising. The tension is incredible.
And here's some good news: a second Locke novel, Pleasantville, featuring Jay Porter is scheduled for release April 21! You can bet I've already joined the hold list at my library for that one.
More book recommendations by me at www.readingwithhippos.com
July 23, 2016
Texas 1981. That's the first line in the book. I love first lines like this. All you say in your head is. Okay. Orient yourself to that year there. It was a volatile year around the world. Ronald Reagan was shot. Bernadette Devlin was shot. Lech Walesa and Solidarity were churning up Poland. The first 5 cases of AIDS were identified as some kind of pneumonia. And Jay Porter was busy being a personal injury lawyer in private practice, trying to keep body soul wife career and life above the water line. The water line is where we meet The Problem. Jay has taken a barter boat ride in exchange for some legal work for a surprise for his wife Bernie's birthday. The boat's a tub, it's hotter than the hinges of hell, and the guy who is captaining the boat isn't the client Jimmy. It's Jimmy's cousin. And as the boat tools back to Allen's Landing through Fifth Ward, a scream joins the party. Then a gunshot. Another. And Jay and Bernadine Porter's lives are tipped over. 1981 is just 13 years later than the Kerner Comission Report, 12 past the Chicago convention. SNCC, SDS, Dr. King and Malcolm X assassinations. Jay Porter's life through those years is interwoven throughout the current events. Houston's port is the second biggest in the country and the stevedores and dock workers are about to strike. Separate and unequal, the unions need a united front against the company and the city. The country is in a recession that threatens the massive growth spike Houston is experiencing. An old romance pokes a broken nose into the stew. Politics, heat, economics, rotten apples, and nice people just trying to live a life. Excellent debut. I've got Locke's next book coming my way soon.
August 13, 2019
3.5 star read rounded up to 4 stars
well-written mystery set in houston w/prime details and tension reflecting the reagan years. houston is mired in trouble with rising oil ("black water") prices & union problems. jay porter is a black attorney who has a radical past & is understandably reluctant to get involved after rescuing a woman & hearing gunshots in the night. he struggles to act even knowing that it is the right thing to do. as jay reckons with past events that have formed his fears & distrust of the police the intersecting storylines come together more fully. also & FWIW, the first chapter is quite exciting & tense which is very different from what follows. i felt like i had to switch gears as the conflict settled into jay's psyche & the storytelling became more subtle.
well-written mystery set in houston w/prime details and tension reflecting the reagan years. houston is mired in trouble with rising oil ("black water") prices & union problems. jay porter is a black attorney who has a radical past & is understandably reluctant to get involved after rescuing a woman & hearing gunshots in the night. he struggles to act even knowing that it is the right thing to do. as jay reckons with past events that have formed his fears & distrust of the police the intersecting storylines come together more fully. also & FWIW, the first chapter is quite exciting & tense which is very different from what follows. i felt like i had to switch gears as the conflict settled into jay's psyche & the storytelling became more subtle.
August 19, 2015
Moved a little slow, a lot of twists and turns, but a good read. Enjoyed the complexity of the lead character Jay Porter, a man with many demons.
The ending was a little flat, left me wondering what, thats it??? Guess it will pick up in Locke's followup, "Pleasantville".
The ending was a little flat, left me wondering what, thats it??? Guess it will pick up in Locke's followup, "Pleasantville".
August 20, 2009
Considering this is Locke's first novel, it is an excellent effort. She paints Houston in the early '80s as a greedy, oil-hungry place divided into rich and poor, black and white. Her main character has a tormented past that continues to follow him around, sometimes in his mind.
It's a novel of redemption and hope, in the end. It's a good solid story, but at times I found myself getting a bit bogged down in the details. It could have gripped me more and drawn me in deeper.
It's a novel of redemption and hope, in the end. It's a good solid story, but at times I found myself getting a bit bogged down in the details. It could have gripped me more and drawn me in deeper.
September 16, 2011
Somehow I thought this book was a mystery. But the real mystery is Jay Porter...why he doesn't connect with his wife whom he loves, who loves him, and on whom he hangs his whole future.
There is that mysterious rescue of a woman from drowning in the bayou; a young man gets beat up by union guys who supposedly support the strike; oil seepage in the back yard of a kook who did a a one-man march on Washington; why is somebody following Jay or is he just paranoid from his "militant" days in the 70's.
But somehow I connected with Jay because I lived through the turbulent 60's and 70's. Although I never had a platform, my husband and I associated with people who were known as "militant," we had our phone bugged, and I often found myself spouting the rhetoric, "by any means necessary." (Ms. Locke uses the term "militant" only once in the whole book, in referring to Stokely Carmichael.)
Jay Porter was like so many people I knew from "The Movement," so I couldn't put this book down. I was transported back in time to those days when we had to be doing something relevant. It was a troubling story that will stay with me for a long time.
There is that mysterious rescue of a woman from drowning in the bayou; a young man gets beat up by union guys who supposedly support the strike; oil seepage in the back yard of a kook who did a a one-man march on Washington; why is somebody following Jay or is he just paranoid from his "militant" days in the 70's.
But somehow I connected with Jay because I lived through the turbulent 60's and 70's. Although I never had a platform, my husband and I associated with people who were known as "militant," we had our phone bugged, and I often found myself spouting the rhetoric, "by any means necessary." (Ms. Locke uses the term "militant" only once in the whole book, in referring to Stokely Carmichael.)
Jay Porter was like so many people I knew from "The Movement," so I couldn't put this book down. I was transported back in time to those days when we had to be doing something relevant. It was a troubling story that will stay with me for a long time.
January 9, 2011
Great story set in Houston Texas in the 80s - I had just spent a week there with my brother, so very applicable.
Good strong characters - though it does seem the novel is just getting going at the end!! Maybe there will be a second book?
Good strong characters - though it does seem the novel is just getting going at the end!! Maybe there will be a second book?
March 11, 2016
Very atmospheric, deeply layered and intense; the malevolence in the novel is palpable and the tension becomes increasingly taut, making it difficult to put this book down before the back cover is closed. Highly recommended.
March 3, 2013
It's been a long long time since I read a mystery. Pretty well out of love with the genre, I'm afraid.
June 21, 2020
I am so glad to have discovered Attica Locke. In reading her sister Tembi Lockes’s novel From Scratch, I saw on the acknowledgment page Tembi thanking her big sister, Attica , for helping her to write. This was my third book by Attica Locke. I love how her novels have black men at the center of her mysteries. They are positive and multi-dimensional. They are smart; they make mistakes, they hate and they love. Additionally, she paints a host of other characters, white and black, the same way. She writes as if she is looking down on a small Texas town as if she is a fly on the wall.
The protagonist in this novel is Jay Porter. An ex-con who was framed for a crime he did not commit, while being set up by his girlfriend. The story takes place from his current situation and that is, a barely-making-it attorney. He and is pregnant wife unexpectedly help a murder suspect. After which, things get crazy. I listened to the audio version of book, which I might add was a waitlist item at five libraries I checked!
Locke also has done a lot of scriptwriting. Her most recent is for the popular Empire.
Solid four stars if one is looking for a novel that tells a good story period.
The protagonist in this novel is Jay Porter. An ex-con who was framed for a crime he did not commit, while being set up by his girlfriend. The story takes place from his current situation and that is, a barely-making-it attorney. He and is pregnant wife unexpectedly help a murder suspect. After which, things get crazy. I listened to the audio version of book, which I might add was a waitlist item at five libraries I checked!
Locke also has done a lot of scriptwriting. Her most recent is for the popular Empire.
Solid four stars if one is looking for a novel that tells a good story period.
January 16, 2022
I recently listened to this mystery/thriller on audio after reading it in ebook first, and I loved it even more in audio. Set in Houston (where I grew up) in 1981, it's the story of a Black lawyer in private practice who interrupts a date with his wife to save a woman from drowning, only to get dragged into a murder investigation that intersects with the political games of Houston's rich and powerful.
Among those connected people is Houston's mayor, the white woman whom Jay believes sold him out to the FBI when he was in college because of his political organizing. (He was also dating her, double trouble.) He almost went to prison then, and the scars from the experience never fully healed. So as we follow Jay in the present, we also learn about what happened *then* and the interconnections.
I already loved Locke's writing & portrayal of every single character in this book, even the Bad Guys. Dion Graham's narration is amazing and this may be the first time I go looking for more audiobooks from the same narrator.
Among those connected people is Houston's mayor, the white woman whom Jay believes sold him out to the FBI when he was in college because of his political organizing. (He was also dating her, double trouble.) He almost went to prison then, and the scars from the experience never fully healed. So as we follow Jay in the present, we also learn about what happened *then* and the interconnections.
I already loved Locke's writing & portrayal of every single character in this book, even the Bad Guys. Dion Graham's narration is amazing and this may be the first time I go looking for more audiobooks from the same narrator.
October 26, 2011
What a terrible read. Have joined a new reading group and this was the library's offering. I really don't understand how it became shortlisted for the Orange Prize last year. Must've been a bad year.
I normally never feel inclined to give-up on a novel, but was sorely tempted to ditch this book.
The voice is clunky, she focuses on irrelevant incidences, for instance:
"she keeps an eye on the chicken thawing in the sink, and when she gets bored with that, she shuffles across the kitchen floor, taking a seat across from her husband at the table." p416.
Interestingly, the most convincing and well-written part of the book was the opening scene on the boat, which, one discovers reading the acknowledgement, is based on a real-life episode. What is perhaps most infuriating is that the acknowledgement is very-well written, flowing far more nicely than any of the novel.
Hope the next book for this group is better. Will make for good discussion at least.
I normally never feel inclined to give-up on a novel, but was sorely tempted to ditch this book.
The voice is clunky, she focuses on irrelevant incidences, for instance:
"she keeps an eye on the chicken thawing in the sink, and when she gets bored with that, she shuffles across the kitchen floor, taking a seat across from her husband at the table." p416.
Interestingly, the most convincing and well-written part of the book was the opening scene on the boat, which, one discovers reading the acknowledgement, is based on a real-life episode. What is perhaps most infuriating is that the acknowledgement is very-well written, flowing far more nicely than any of the novel.
Hope the next book for this group is better. Will make for good discussion at least.
February 12, 2018
Having heard raving reviews about Attica Locke, I was happy to see any book by her in my library. But I have mixed feelings on this one. This may more appeal to someone who lives in Houston or from the Baby Boomers generation. I enjoyed the inclusion of race relations onto the narrative and even the reflections on the Black Power Movement and its fallout. This was the strongest point here. This is in essence the setup for a series featuring Jay Porter, a black man who faced many disappointments in life and wants to make a difference. The crime aspect, the initial story felt weak for me, I figured out who was the mastermind early and was not ground breaking. But at times seemed unnecessarily convoluted. So the literary portions were great, the crime parts, meh. And I’m not a fan of the flashbacks as a means of background filler. They often detracted from the main story. But so apropos for the 80s.
Despite my mixed feelings I will be on the lookout for more of her books.
Despite my mixed feelings I will be on the lookout for more of her books.
August 8, 2009
The writing was well done and the characters well developed but this is not a book I will recomend to many of our customers. The biggest problem I had is that the main character was one of those characters in movies and books that I hate because they always seem to make the wrong choices, keep everything to themselves, and wind up getting deeper and deeper into trouble. You find yourself screaming, go to the police already. However, in the end, going to the police may not have helped him. All that being said, this still has possibility as a book club title. It could generate a variety of discussions including one dealing with race realtions now as compared to the time in which the book is set as well as many opportunities to ask the question, what would you do if....
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,134 reviews