Such a pitch-perfect book. She captures the setting exactly, and everything rises from the setting. I would have liked a little more solve-it mystery, but she is clear that is not what it is--it is straight-ahead noir. Jay Porter and Bernie are vivid, as are the supporting cast. She makes it matter at the personal and societal levels. That opening scene, and the ending--wow. Cannot wait to read more. ( )

This book tells a complicated, interesting story through a very specific lens. The early '80's, Houston Texas, a former black radical turned small time lawyer
There's a lot to take away from this narrow piece of recent American history. I won't dive into the details but it's a very ambitious book, while still being very personal.
My few quibbles with the book are around the pace - it starts slow. Slow enough that I put it down a couple times before I got into enough to see the potential. Then, about 2/3s of the though it's suddenly going at such a clip, it's hard to keep up with. The sense of how much time has passed is unclear and that's occasionally disorienting.
These minor issues aside, it's a great novel, telling a compelling piece of American history . ( )

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. ( )

First off, I’m thrilled to have found Locke’s work. After a time-consuming search for legal thrillers by someone other than white males, it was easy to obtain a copy of her book. By the end of the first chapter, I was “hooked” by her writing, and I’d also been moved to tears. Quite an accomplishment.

What didn’t work for me:

1. The ending felt somewhat unresolved. There are some minor plot strings left dangling, but I believe it’s preparation for the sequel, Pleasantville.

2. My other quibble is that Locke switches between the first and last names of minor characters within the same scene. A character named “Donnie Simpson” is called both Mr. Simpson and Donnie within a few lines. It gives the impression that there are two characters rather than one. I noticed the same issue in a scene with another lawyer, his client, and an oil corporation executive. This can be confusing.

What works for me:

Jay.
He is a “broken man” (pg. 249). His past felony arrest colors everything in his life. He narrowly escaped conviction because of one juror. Locke is good at finding the telling details that highlight his fears as a black man who escaped a felony charge.

His complicated connections with people he’d like to forget are integrated into the present conflict. He can’t avoid the woman who betrayed him. He can’t avoid his old friend from the civil rights movement. He can’t avoid his past, though he tries.

He’s torn between silence and speaking. His wife wants him to “let her inside” but he won’t. He can’t. Though his silence damages their relationship, he’s too afraid to break his habit of silence and lying. He monitors every encounter for signs of possible betrayal or danger. At one point, he drives to Pasadena, where a welcome sign states “Proud home to the KKK.”

I reacted with horror. Jay?

“In an odd way, Jay finds the sign comforting. He has come to appreciate these kinds of visual clues.” (Black Water Rising, pg. 133)

He muses that he feels the same about Confederate flags in truck windows. “It’s a caution before trouble starts, offering a clean window of time in which to make a run for it” (pg. 133). That’s not a view I, as a white woman, would have imagined. But Jay does. He is a vividly-drawn character.

The setting.
Locke uses everything from smells to the subject of a talk radio show to recreate Houston in the early 1980s. I noticed that she uses the call-in radio show both to reflect Jay’s internal tension and to increase tension about the strike, the threats of violence, and the differing viewpoints of the racial minority and majority.

The view of the legal system.
This is definitely not a typical middle-to-upper class white person’s point of view:

“That he’s an innocent man, as he was back then, all those years ago, is no real comfort. He knows cops and prosecutors have a natural talent for bending evidence, twisting the truth this way and that, all in the same of putting somebody behind bars.” (Black Water Rising, pg. 188)

Is this cynical? Maybe. Is it based on his experiences? Yes. Is he wrong? It depends on your viewpoint.

After saving the drowning woman’s life, he drops her off at the police station but won’t tell the police anything about their encounter:

“He knows first hand the long, creative arm of Southern law enforcement, knows when he ought to keep his mouth shut.” (Black Water Rising, pg. 22-23)

The other characters.
Locke vividly portrays people like the Reverend (his father-in-law), his wife Bernie, his friend/not-quite-legal investigator Rolly, even his sister-in-law Evelyn. The unsympathetic ones are well written, too. The almost-victimized female, other lawyers, the white female mayor: they are complex characters with competing motives. Some are desperate to shed their pasts. Others are trying to hold onto both the past and present. Even the walk-on people, like the other strikers, the union leadership, etc. are vivid to me.

The integration of past and present.
There are multiple flashback chapters about Jay’s past involvement in the civil rights movement as an idealistic college student. But I never felt jerked between past and present. Locke shows the effect of one on the other. The flashbacks make sense and work in the context of the present story line.

Bottom line: Read this book. ( )

Terrific first novel. Set in Houston in the 80s Locke is razor sharp on racial politics and fear that comes from the gut. There's also some nifty actual politics which hold the story up long enough to delve into some classic noir tropes. I really enjoyed this. ( )