Disordered Daggers : Pleasantville by Attica Locke (2015)
Attica Locke’s absorbing political thriller is very specific in its setting - election night, November 1996, in the mainly black neighbourhood of Pleasantville, Houston. This is the second outing for Attica Locke’s defense attorney hero Jay Porter, here wrestling with the burdens of a ten year old Erin Brockovich style compensation claim against an oil company for contaminating the local river. When a campaign volunteer for a mayoral candidate is abducted, Jay is called in when the candidate’s own son is arrested as the prime suspect.
Jay is a winning, fallible, sympathetic viewpoint character (in my head Morgan Freeman twenty years ago or Hugh Quarshie) and Attica Locke eventually builds up a head of steam for her narrative as she goes deep into the background and history of Pleasantville’s leading citizens. Some of the supporting cast - Jay’s fixer, ex-con Rollie Snow, the bluesman drifter A G Hats, and the eminence grise of Pleasantville Sam “Sunny” Hathorne - are particularly striking.
This did take me a while to get into, as I found the two political campaigns confusingly interchangeable (and my knowledge of the workings of mayoral elections in the States is not strong.) The trial that dominates the last quarter of the book is beautifully done, and features a moment that I hadn’t seen done before in crime fiction (when Jay walks out of the court in the middle of one of his own arguments because of something he’s seen in the courtroom.) Stronger on the politics than the murder mystery, but all in all the heavyweight among the Gold nominees that I’ve read so far.
Jay is a winning, fallible, sympathetic viewpoint character (in my head Morgan Freeman twenty years ago or Hugh Quarshie) and Attica Locke eventually builds up a head of steam for her narrative as she goes deep into the background and history of Pleasantville’s leading citizens. Some of the supporting cast - Jay’s fixer, ex-con Rollie Snow, the bluesman drifter A G Hats, and the eminence grise of Pleasantville Sam “Sunny” Hathorne - are particularly striking.
This did take me a while to get into, as I found the two political campaigns confusingly interchangeable (and my knowledge of the workings of mayoral elections in the States is not strong.) The trial that dominates the last quarter of the book is beautifully done, and features a moment that I hadn’t seen done before in crime fiction (when Jay walks out of the court in the middle of one of his own arguments because of something he’s seen in the courtroom.) Stronger on the politics than the murder mystery, but all in all the heavyweight among the Gold nominees that I’ve read so far.