Bluebird, Bluebird (Locke) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Attica Lock is a highly gifted author whose prose — steeped at times in idiom and lyricism yet sparse and lucid at others — is a joy to read. Laced with flashbacks and bedeviled with twists and turns, the plot propels readers to the end. The good news is that Bluebird, Bluebird is the first in a planned series with Darren Matthews in the lead, and that’s something to look forward to. Highly recommended.  READ MORE …
P.J. Adler - LitLovers


Locke writes in a blues-infused idiom that lends a strain of melancholy and a sense of loss to her lyrical style.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times Book Review


Racial tensions are at the core of this elegant thriller, set in Shelby County, Texas. There is injustice here — institutional racism that has its roots in Texas’s history as a confederate state and continues today.… In slow yet gripping chapters, Locke studies the impact of racism on a small town and its people.
Claire Khoda Hazelton - Guardian (UK)


Locke is a brisk writer with a sharp eye for the subtleties of how rural white Southerners tend to act as if their little towns belong to them — and react harshly to black independence. Still, those truths are not necessarily the evidence one finds in a murder investigation in a small town in Texas. Those places are complicated.
Neely Tucker - Washington Post


An emotionally dense and intricately detailed thriller, roiling with conflicting emotions steeped in this nation's troubled past and present.… A rich sense of place and relentless feeling of dread permeate Attica Locke's heartbreakingly resonant new novel about race and justice in America.… Bluebird, Bluebird is no simple morality tale. Far from it. It rises above "left and right" and "black and white" and follows the threads that inevitably bind us together, even as we rip them apart.
James Endrst - USA Today


Attica Locke's stupendous fourth novel is suffused with the blues. Pushing her classic noir plot deep into history and culture, the Houston native sings her own unshakable, timeless lament. Streaked with wit and hard-earned wisdom, Bluebird, Bluebird soars.
Chicago Tribune


Attica Locke's terrific Bluebird, Bluebird simmers with racial tension.… [A] story told with Locke's crystal-clear vision and pleasurably elemental prose.
Seattle Times


Locke pens a poignant love letter to the lazy red-dirt roads and Piney Woods that serve as a backdrop to a noir thriller as murky as the bayous and bloodlines that thread through the region.… Locke shows off her chops as a superb storyteller.… She is adept at crafting characters who don't easily fit the archetypes of good and evil, but exist in the thick grayness of humanness, the knotty demands of loyalties and the baseness of survival. Locke holds up the mirror of the racial debate in America and shows us how the light bends and fractures what is right, wrong and what simply is the way it is — but perhaps not as it should be.
Jaundrea Clay - Houston Chronicle


Powerful.… Locke is a master of plot who's honed her craft.… The deepest pleasures to be found in Bluebird, Bluebird, though, are in her renderings of those who've loved and lost but still want to believe in the world's benevolence.
Leigh Haber - Oprah Magazine


I've never bought the notion of the Great American Novel. I think when literary historians look back, they'll realize this time had many, but if Attica Locke's Bluebird Bluebird isn't on the list, I'm coming back to haunt them.
Carole E. Barrowman - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel


[Locke's] mystery novels are top notch.… [T]he book's hero, a black Texas Ranger, and his fight for justice make this a page-turner that brings Texas into sharp focus.
Bustle


Absorbing.… Darren must deal with his conflicting loyalties to his family and to Texas, as well as his identity as a black man, as he struggles for justice in this tale of racism, hatred, and, surprisingly, love.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [A]n atmospheric, convoluted mystery seasoned with racial tension and family loyalty. Verdict: Locke is a gifted author, and her intriguing and compelling crime novel will keep readers engrossed. —Sandra Knowles, South Carolina State Lib., Columbia
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Locke, having stockpiled an acclaimed array of crime novels, deserves a career breakthrough for this deftly plotted whodunit whose writing pulses throughout with a raw, blues-inflected lyricism.
Kirkus Reviews