Jay Porter knows he is “this close” to being in tr
ouble. He can’t rub two pennies together there is a baby on the way, and he really needs pull together a surprise of some kind for his wife’s birthday. It truly becomes a night to remember when gun shots are heard, and then they pull a woman onto the boat they were taking an evening cruise on.
Attica Locke’s debut novel, set in Houston at the beginning of the 80’s, is a face paced mystery. Taking us through oil boom town trying to keep its boom going, a dockworkers strike, a disappear-reappearing .22 and a Reverend for a father-in-law. It also tells the back story of Jay, a man who started out fighting for his civil rights in college and end up fighting for his life. Jay Porter is a man who wants to do the right thing, just too many people are pushing him into corners where he is going to have to fight his way out of. It shows how one makes the man that deals with the other later in life.
Black Water Rising is one of six nominees for the Edgar Allen Poe Award, Best First Novel by an American Writer. I look forward to other great works by her in the future.
The other nominees in this category:
The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano
Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley
The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf
A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield
In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff
I usually read all of the books in this category before the award is presented on April 29, 2010 in New York. For more information on the Edgar Awards, go to the Mystery Writers of America website at www.mysterywriters.org