Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke *** (of 4)

Highway 59 bisects the United States down its middle. As it dives through East Texas the division between white and black America is a long fuse waiting for a spark. Attica Locke describes what happens in a small waystop along the highway: in one end of town a poor black and elderly Geneva Sweet serves tired, hot, mostly black customers, and on the other end, a bar serves alcohol to tattooed members of the Aryan Brotherhood.

When a black man is murdered before a white woman is murdered -- inverting the expected sequence of events -- a black officer in the esteemed Texas Rangers, Darren Matthews, is sent to investigate. Opening a murder mystery with a reminder that whenever a white woman in the south is threatened, a black man is selected to pay the price is a reminder that pervades the book. On its heels is the important, and too often overlooked point, that for every black man unjustly imprisoned by a southern white jury there is a black person victimized by crime that remains "unsolved" because a cracker police force is too lazy or indifferent to complete its investigation.

Darren Matthews, as lead investigator, unfortunately, is a detective cut from not very original cloth. His wife is so frustrated by Darren's determination to be a Texas Ranger rather than a lawyer she has broken up their marriage. Darren responds by drinking too much. He is a detective that looks like every other detective in a murder mystery. Still, confronting the ways in which the legacy of centuries of southern racism continues to survive and destroy is important to face.