Buy Books
1520 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA. 95060 • 831-423-0900 | CLICK FOR HOURS
1520 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA. 95060 • 831-423-0900 | CLICK FOR HOURS
The mix of political and historical details lends a depth to this vivid thriller. Locke plots a twisting path that has many subtle aspects as her main character, Jay Porter, tries to keep a murder from messing up his life. Set in the 1980s, the story also takes many trips back to Jay’s more radical youth as he tries to reconcile his past, his present, and his sense of morality. It’s part social commentary, part nail-biter, and altogether highly recommended.
— Nici
“Debut author Attica Locke has written a riveting novel set in Houston in the early 1980s, as two former civil rights activists find themselves in a new fight for justice for laborers in the big oil industry of Texas.”
— Sarah Bagby, Watermark Books, Wichita, KS
Attica Locke—a writer and producer of FOX’s Empire—delivers an engrossing, complex, and cinematic thriller about crime and racial justice
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist (Mystery/Thriller)
Edgar Award Nominee (Best First Novel)
The Orange Prize for Fiction (Shortlist)
“A near-perfect balance of trenchant social commentary, rich characterizations, and action-oriented plot.... Attica Locke [is] a writer wise beyond her years.” — Los Angeles Times
“Atmospheric… deeply nuanced... akin to George Pelecanos or Dennis Lehane.... Subtle and compelling.” — New York Times
Attica Locke is the author of Black Water Rising, which was nominated for an Edgar Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was short-listed for the UK’s Orange Prize, and also the national bestseller The Cutting Season, which won an Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. She is a producer and writer on the Fox drama Empire. She is on the board of directors for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, where she lives.