Highway 59
2 primary works • 3 total works
Book 1
A powerful thriller about the explosive intersection of love, race, and justice from a writer and producer of the Emmy winning Fox TV/Channel 4 show Empire
'Dazzlingly good ... a seriously impressive writer' Observer
Southern fables usually went the other way around: a white woman killed or harmed in some way, real or imagined and then, like the moon follows the sun, a black man ends up dead.
Highway 59 is the forgotten route that connects the backwood towns across the state of Texas. It's a place that the rest of the country seems to have left behind. But then two bodies wash up in a bayou outside the tiny town of Lark in three days: a well-to-do African-American lawyer from Chicago and a poor local white girl, barely nineteen.
Darren Mathews is a Texas Ranger on the brink of indictment. His marriage is failing and he's losing himself to the bottle - until he hears about the murders. There is no clear connection between the two victims, but as fear and paranoia begin to grow, the town's racial tensions reach breaking point. Having grown up as a black man in Texas, Darren knows what is at stake, and risks everything to investigate the case. But the locals don't take kindly to a black Ranger asking too many questions, and Darren soon finds the target on his own back ...
Suffused with the unique music and colour of East Texas, Bluebird, Bluebird is both a page-turning thriller and a timely novel about the collision of race and justice in America.
'Dazzlingly good ... a seriously impressive writer' Observer
Southern fables usually went the other way around: a white woman killed or harmed in some way, real or imagined and then, like the moon follows the sun, a black man ends up dead.
Highway 59 is the forgotten route that connects the backwood towns across the state of Texas. It's a place that the rest of the country seems to have left behind. But then two bodies wash up in a bayou outside the tiny town of Lark in three days: a well-to-do African-American lawyer from Chicago and a poor local white girl, barely nineteen.
Darren Mathews is a Texas Ranger on the brink of indictment. His marriage is failing and he's losing himself to the bottle - until he hears about the murders. There is no clear connection between the two victims, but as fear and paranoia begin to grow, the town's racial tensions reach breaking point. Having grown up as a black man in Texas, Darren knows what is at stake, and risks everything to investigate the case. But the locals don't take kindly to a black Ranger asking too many questions, and Darren soon finds the target on his own back ...
Suffused with the unique music and colour of East Texas, Bluebird, Bluebird is both a page-turning thriller and a timely novel about the collision of race and justice in America.
Book 3
A Waterstones Thriller of the Month
Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize
A Sunday Times Book of the Year
'Political crime fiction of the highest order' - SUNDAY TIMES
'A propulsive and compelling novel' - GUARDIAN
Nine-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; instead he found himself all alone, adrift on the vastness of Caddo Lake. A sudden noise - and all goes dark.
Ranger Darren Mathews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she's not above a little blackmail to press her advantage.
An unlikely possibility of rescue arrives in the form of a case down Highway 59, in a small lakeside town. With Texas already suffering a new wave of racial violence in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, a black man is a suspect in the possible murder of a missing white boy: the son of an Aryan Brotherhood captain. In deep country where the rule of law only goes so far, Darren has to battle centuries-old prejudices as he races to save not only Levi King, but himself.
'One of America's finest novelists' - DAILY MAIL
'A searingly exciting story' - SUNDAY EXPRESS
Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize
A Sunday Times Book of the Year
'Political crime fiction of the highest order' - SUNDAY TIMES
'A propulsive and compelling novel' - GUARDIAN
Nine-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; instead he found himself all alone, adrift on the vastness of Caddo Lake. A sudden noise - and all goes dark.
Ranger Darren Mathews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she's not above a little blackmail to press her advantage.
An unlikely possibility of rescue arrives in the form of a case down Highway 59, in a small lakeside town. With Texas already suffering a new wave of racial violence in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, a black man is a suspect in the possible murder of a missing white boy: the son of an Aryan Brotherhood captain. In deep country where the rule of law only goes so far, Darren has to battle centuries-old prejudices as he races to save not only Levi King, but himself.
'One of America's finest novelists' - DAILY MAIL
'A searingly exciting story' - SUNDAY EXPRESS