The Deep Ellum Stories Continue: An excerpt

 By G. S. Norwood, abetted by Jan S. Gephardt

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of Deep Ellum Blues’ publication, and some of our readers want to know. Will the Deep Ellum stories continue?

The covers for Deep Ellum Pawn and Deep Ellum Blues are ©2019 and 2020, respectively, by Chaz Kemp.

To that, we’re happy to answer an emphatic yes. Ms. Eddy’s adventures aren’t nearly over yet. But when’s the next story coming? Well, that’s a little harder to say. Death in Deep Ellum, the working title for the third story, is a murder mystery. It’s required some theological thinking and some careful interweaving of the plot elements, while G. also works on several other exciting fiction projects.

Oh, yes, and her job. Concerts are starting up again, and the grant proposals never did let up. So G.’s a busy lady in her day job, too.

The Deep Ellum Stories Continue

But yes. Rest assured. The Deep Ellum stories continue! To prove it, this post includes a first look at Death in Deep Ellum’s opening. But before that, a quick look at how we got here.

In the first story, Deep Ellum Pawn, we met Ms. Eddy Weekes, proprietor of Deep Ellum Pawn. Her shop is always there when you need it, and she rocks the most epic storage room and garden-with-water feature that you may ever have encountered.

The e-edition of Deep Ellum Pawn in a visualization from Book Brush. Cover artwork © 2019 by Chaz Kemp.

Deep Ellum Pawn Description

The Golden Fiddle is back. Can Ms. Eddy break its curse this time?

What’s a pawnshop owner to do? The cursed Golden Fiddle keeps coming back to Deep Ellum Pawn, the shop where Ms. Eddy Weekes stands guard over the historic Dallas, Texas, neighborhood of Deep Ellum. Each time the fiddle shows up, it leaves a swath of broken dreams and shattered lives, with a pack of fearsome Hell Hounds hot on its trail.

Music, magic, and legends intertwine in Deep Ellum, and things long buried have a way of coming back ‘round again. Only Ms. Eddy can end the fiddle’s curse, but first she must learn its secrets.

Will she have the tools she needs to fend off the Hell Hounds and get to the heart of the Golden Fiddle, before an ancient evil brings the darkness back to Deep Ellum forever?

The Deep Ellum Stories Continue with Deep Ellum Blues

We published Deep Ellum Pawn in November 2019, preceded by three successive blog posts with excerpts and a release-day announcement. People enjoyed it, so G. got to work on a second. You might also enjoy another post with some of the story’s background, and another one on the making of the cover.

We rolled out Deep Ellum Blues not quite a year later, again with a series of blog posts. They included an excerpt, an interview of G. by internationally-bestselling mystery novelist Deborah Crombie, and a look at the making of the cover. We also posted a Setlist with YouTube videos of Mudcat’s songs (scroll down), and a release notice. And we followed its release with a post by G. about the famous song Deep Ellum Blues.

The e-edition of Deep Ellum Blues in a visualization from Book Brush. Cover artwork © 2020 by Chaz Kemp.

Deep Ellum Blues Description

Free will is a rule she doesn’t break.

As the genius loci of Deep Ellum, Ms. Eddy Weekes is a hands-off goddess who won’t micro-manage human affairs. She’d rather sit on the sidelines and enjoy the show. Her motto? “People have the right to make their own hideous, life-altering mistakes.”

But there’s something different about the young blues musician Mudcat Randall.

Maybe if her old friend Waylon hadn’t called him to her attention, she’d have let things be. Maybe if she hadn’t glimpsed something special in his music . . . But Mudcat is flirting with disaster. Eddy’s old adversary wants him to sign a tempting management contract, and there are deadly strings attached.

When a third force enters the fray, everything Mudcat has ever prayed for is suddenly on the line, and Eddy knows the game is rigged against him. Can Eddy break through to the headstrong musician? Or will an old and tragic story make Deep Ellum sing a new kind of blues?

Coming Next: Death in Deep Ellum

We promised you an excerpt. Here’s a glimpse of the current draft’s opening.

Chapter One: Prayer of the Dying

There is no prayer like the prayer of the dying.

As the genius loci of Deep Ellum, the historically Black, funky, happenin’ heart of Dallas, Texas, I hear those prayers, whether the people praying live here or just come to hang out for a while. Think of me as the neighborhood’s resident goddess. You can call me Ms. Eddy Weekes.

I heard Perkins’ prayer just after dark on a scorching summer evening. Perkins was an alcoholic, and a member in good standing of the homeless population that still drifts through Deep Ellum despite all the developers’ efforts to gentrify. I’d kept my eye on him for the past couple of years, but I hadn’t anticipated any sudden downturn in his condition.

Ms. Eddy, ©2019 by Chaz Kemp.

When he called, I was with him in an instant. I found him curled on his side by a back-alley dumpster off Elm Street. He’d been shot three times in the gut, and blood was everywhere.

“I’m here, Perkins. I heard you. I can fix this,” I said. The day’s heat radiated up from the crumbling asphalt as I dropped to the ground, but Perkins’ skin was already going cold, his dark skin going gray.

He rolled onto his back, his head on my knees, and I put my arms around his shoulders, trying with all my will to knit his shattered intestines back together.

“It’s my time, Miz Eddy. Don’t worry ‘bout me. It’s my time.”

His voice was a thin thread, only sustained by the force of my will. He had called out to me in need. I had to know what he wanted me to do.

“What happened?”

“I’ze jus’ here, and he come up out of nowhere. Shot me. Didn’t say a thing. Then he’s gone.” Perkins bucked a little against my legs, racked by a cough, a shiver, or some spasm of pain.

“What can I do, Perkins? How can I help?”

“I don. Wanna go. To the bad place. I bin. A drunk. But I ain’t. Bin bad.” His breath was coming in short gasps now.

“You won’t go to the bad place,” I promised. I could see his soul starting to spin out and away from his body, so I reeled it in, holding it close. “What else?”

Perkins made a supreme effort. He used his very last breath to ask one more thing of me.

“Get that son of a bitch.”

He sagged in my arms as I drew together the last tattered fragments of his soul, winding it into a tight ball. Holding it in my heart, as well as my hands, I said aloud, “Nathan Allen Perkins, I see you. I see you in your entirety. I see your heart. I see your mind. I see your soul. You are worthy. You will be missed. You will be remembered. You are safe in my hands, and free to move forward without fear.”

Then I tucked his soul into a pocket of time and space not even my old foe, Nick, could hack into. I sent the little pocket to the store room of my pawn shop, where Perkins’ soul could rest until I delivered it on up to the next level.

That done, I paused a moment to absorb the loss of a man I had liked. I’d given Perkins sandwiches from the shop down the street. He’d kept an eye out for Morsel, my wandering cat. We had shared gossip, and the news of the neighborhood. Perkins’ belief in me had fed my being just as surely as my sandwiches had fed his. I am far too old to trade in human relationships but, as far as it was possible, Perkins had been my friend. I would miss him.

So I took the moment to mourn. Something vital was now gone from Deep Ellum, and I felt the loss.

Then I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and called 9-1-1.

It would only take the cops a few minutes to get here.

Ms. Eddy, ©2020 by Chaz Kemp.

In those few minutes, I took a look around the alley. I wasn’t interested in the three brass shell casings I spotted at the corner where Crowdus Street intersected with the alley that ran behind a rag-tag assortment of take-out restaurants. I didn’t much care about the view from the youth hostel that loomed above me, or the rusty, reeking dumpster that must have all but hidden Perkins unless someone was looking for him. I saw the bottle he’d been nursing, smelled the rotgut that had spilled from it.

And, faintly, under the garbage, the booze and the blood, I smelled something else entirely. As I rose from the pavement to stand guard over my friend’s body, I caught just the barest trace of brimstone. Somehow, in some way I could not yet see, Nick had had a hand in this.

I would help the police, if I could, to find the man who pulled the trigger, but Perkins had asked me for more than mere human justice. He’d asked me to “get that son of a bitch.” That meant I was going to have to track down the Devil himself.

The Deep Ellum Stories Continue

We hope you’re looking forward to Death in Deep Ellum as much as we are. And we’ll keep you posted on progress!

IMAGE CREDITS:

The covers for Deep Ellum Pawn and Deep Ellum Blues are ©2019 and 2020, respectively, by Chaz Kemp. The character developments for Ms. Eddy are also ©2019 and 2020, respectively, by Chaz Kemp. Many thanks!

Book Review: A Finer End by Deborah Crombie

Ancient Mystery and Contemporary Murder Mingle in Avalon Territory 

A Finer End, by Deborah Crombie
I don't often read something published as a traditional mystery, thriller, and even police procedural that I think my friends who are into paranormal or urban fantasy might like, but this just might be the book to bridge that gap.

Set in contemporary Glastonbury (well, almost contemporary: it was published in 2002) at the foot of the fabled Tor, this is Book Seven in Crombie's "Kincaid and James" series of British mysteries, but it most definitely will stand on its own. 

Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James are experiencing both personal and professional upheaval in this book. They move out of their roles as professional partners and explore their personal relationship--wherever it may be going--while Gemma faces a challenging new professional assignment and Duncan copes with the loss of his erstwhile sergeant (Gemma, who's been promoted) and begins to learn how to parent Kit, the twelve-year-old son he only recently discovered he had.

Is the mysterious Glastonbury Abbey monk Edmund for real?

When Duncan's cousin Jack Montfort asks him to come to Glastonbury for a weekend to help with a rather unusual matter, Duncan and Gemma hope spend some pleasant, relaxing time with him and each other. 

But when Jack's "unusual matter" turns out to be mysterious automatic writing from a twelfth-century monk named Edmund of Glastonbury, in far more literate Latin than Jack could manufacture on his own, the weekend takes a decidedly unusual turn. 

And that's before the murder of artisan tile-maker and former midwife Garnet Todd upends everything. What was Garnet's odd obsession with the runaway pregnant teenager Faith Wills, and why is Faith seemingly compelled to climb the Tor, despite her delicate condition? Did someone also try to kill Jack's girlfriend, the local vicar Winnie Catesby? 

Why does the pregnant teenager, Faith, keep trying to climb the Tor?

Ancient violence, contemporary murder, and intertwining mysteries reveal themselves through the eyes of many viewpoint characters, and spin into a gripping climax and resolution that you will not see coming.

I've been following Deborah Crombie's work for several years (fairness disclaimer: she's also a valued friend), and in 2015 I made it a project to read all 16-and-counting titles in her "Kincaid and James" series of mysteries set in Great Britain (a rewarding experience for me, both as a reader and as a writer). 

This book in particular is a master-class in juggling more than the usual number of POV characters while keeping all of them distinct and interesting, and weaving past and present, myth and police procedure, analytical logic and mysticism into a fascinating, multi-dimensional tapestry of story.

IMAGES: Many thanks to Amazon, for the book cover image; unfortunately, A Finer End is out of print, but Amazon still has copies available. The beautiful photo of the Glastonbury Abbey ruins is from TripAdvisorUK, and the evocative photo of Glastonbury Tor is by the AP photographer Peter Morrison, via Fairyroom.

Book Review: Why Thrillers Sometimes Drive Me Nuts

The Sixth Man

Author: David Baldacci

Available from Rainy Day Books and other fine booksellers.

I’m still looting and pillaging in my late aunt’s library, and getting quite an education about the contemporary thriller genre. 

This week’s book, The Sixth Man, is another from the mind and word processer of David Baldacci.  Baldacci is a gifted writer, and he’s perfected his craft to a high level—but I’m becoming more and more clear on the fact that the thriller genre itself apparently has a tendency to punch a lot of my buttons.

The Sixth Man is especially a case in point.

Emotions: now there’s a concept

I’ve already written about the problem I have with emotionless characters—especially characters who remain emotionless, even when they are in situations where they shouldn’t or couldn’t be emotionless. 

Our two main protagonists are characters about whom Baldacci has written both before and since, Sean King and Michelle Maxwell. 

In this book they are in a semi-romantic relationship, as well as being private investigator-partners. In the course of the book they are placed in difficult and dangerous situations where they worry about each other, struggle to survive, and encounter other situations in which any normal person’s emotions would be engaged.

I sometimes wanted to yell at author David Baldacci.

However, we don’t generally encounter pumping adrenalin, pounding hearts, sinking stomachs, or other visceral reactions in this book—not even when they’d be highly appropriate, natural reactions.  I began to wonder for a while if all the characters in this story are sociopaths.  Striving to remain dispassionate and rational despite dramatic events is not the question, here—not feeling anything at all is. 

Neither King nor Maxwell has been characterized as a Zen master or a champion emotion-compartmentalizer, and yet time after time I wanted to yell, “How does she FEEL about that?” or “What does that make him FEEL?”

Wanting to yell at the author is definitely the kind of thing that bumps me right out of the story and distracts from my willing suspension of disbelief, so it’s a problem.

Unfortunately, it’s not the only problem I had with this book. 

The basis for the story is a big WTF

Yeah, that’s a biggie.  For me the concept of The Analyst—while perhaps not totally preposterous (?)—seems really problematical as an ongoing business plan, much less the foundation upon which national security should depend. 

If only one person ever found actually is able (because of his unusual mental capabilities) to do this job, then what’s the long-term outlook?  What’s a nation to do, when The Analyst dies or burns out (or is framed for serial murder)?  On what enduring safeguard do you base national security then?

It has a f—king prologue

I will readily admit I have a built-in prejudice against prologues (if it’s important to the story, why can’t it be “seeded in” during the setup?  In many cases, that would be the better option). I was annoyed when I found this book had one.

Prologues were invented for a reason, though, and I could maybe understand upon reflection why Baldacci used one in this case.  On the other hand, 15 chapters and 100 pages is a long time to wait until an important character, whom readers haven’t seen since the prologue, shows up again.  I had to go back to the f—king prologue to remind myself who the heck this dude was.

The opening is a nameless torture scene

I really despise this kind of opening—you know the one: you’ve read them, yourself.

There’s some nameless victim in a dark room, writhing in pain and begging “make it stop!” but Remorseless Powers In Charge just watch him squirm.  It takes three pages to get to the first character’s name, in this book (as it happens, he’s the guy who doesn’t show up again for another 100 pages).

I’ve read both beginning writers and actual, award-winning and/or bestselling authors use this device, and it never works for me, no matter what level of skills are brought to the task.

It’s supposed to be a dramatic opening that piques the reader’s interest, I guess.  But it invariably makes me want to scream and throw the book across the room.  I soldiered on in this case, but it was a very near thing.

Earlier books are summarized in an “As you know” scene

Other writers may call it different things; I call it an “as you know” scene.  It’s a scene in which two characters (in this case King and Maxwell) have a conversation, in which they tell each other things they already know, for the “benefit” of readers who don’t already know them. 

No one actually has conversations like this in real life—we already know!  Baldacci should already know better, too!   

Okay, so are there any redeeming features?

Sure there are.  If you can tolerate some of the aspects that gave me the occasional urge to yell, and you’re willing to accept the general levels of alienation and paranoia that seem to be kind of the accepted attitude for most contemporary thrillers I’ve read, then other aspects of The Sixth Man deliver pretty well. 

The perplexing murders and the underlying pattern that only gradually comes into focus are well handled. It was an interesting mystery, well paced, and with the various subplots woven in skillfully. Despite the low emotional inputs, the ending is fast-paced and interesting. And just deserts are nicely served to most of the deserving.

If this is your cup of tea, then by all means, go for it!

IMAGE CREDITS: Many thanks to Rainy Day Books for the cover image.  The photo of the author is courtesy of the "EBookee" website. 

Book Review: The Compartmentalized Man

The Innocent

Author: David Baldacci

Available from Rainy Day Books and other fine booksellers.

Last week I wrote about Joe Pike, the “Closed Man.”  This week’s protagonist, Will Robie, takes the “unemotional man” thing a step even farther.

Will Robie isn’t just closed: he’s a stone-cold hit man with major skills and apparent ice water for blood . . . except he’s just turned forty, and without exactly noticing it, he’s started to have a midlife crisis.

You might well ask, “How the heck can you have a midlife crisis without noticing it?”  It’s a pretty amazing feat of compartmentalization going on, there, truly.

I enjoyed watching Baldacci pull it off.  He hits just the right balance.

Robie notices that he’s occasionally experiencing certain disquieting reactions.  You or I would call them “normal emotions,” but his reaction is essentially to think something on the order of damn, that makes me uncomfortable, and then he puts up a new wall.

Author David Baldacci in 
a recent photo.

If all he had to deal with were straightforward jobs, clean and cold, he might get away with this approach.  Unfortunately for Robie, life keeps putting challenging women in his path.

First there’s Julie, a young teenager in whom Robie is surprised to find a number of admirable qualities.  He rescues her, and subsequently feels responsible for her—even though this feeling of responsibility irritates, puzzles, and burdens him in unaccustomed ways.  Somehow, that particular wall keeps falling over.

Then there’s Nikki Vance, a tough-minded, perceptive FBI agent with whom he regularly locks horns, but with whom he also has to cooperate, if he’s going to find up who tried to set him up, then kill him.

And finally there’s his neighbor Annie Lambert, with whom he has possibly one of the most weirdly passionless liaisons I’ve ever read about, even though at one point they end up in bed with each other.  And man, is THAT ever confusing for poor Will Robie, who apparently hasn’t had sex (at least not with a partner) in years!

Annie Lambert actually is my biggest complaint about this book.  Her role in the climax (of the STORY—not the other presumed climax, which we don’t get to see) was one I saw coming, and hoped I was wrong—but no, Baldacci went there. 

The other difficulty with the ending is the emotional impact of the dramatic “reveal” at the climax.  That impact is seriously blunted by the fact that the viewpoint character, through whose eyes we are seeing the action, is doing everything in his power NOT to have an emotional reaction.

All things considered, however, I’d still recommend The Innocent. It’s a good read, a good mystery, and an interesting, challenging character portrayal that’s handled well.   

IMAGE CREDITS: Cover image for the book is courtesy of Rainy Day Books.  The photo of David Baldacci is from the Feb. 27, 2014 issue of Barnes & Nobles online Review.

Book Review: The Closed Man

Book Reviewed: The Sentry (2011) 
Author: Robert Crais

Available from: Rainy Day Books, or other fine booksellers.

The Sentry

I have been sampling the collection in my late aunt's extensive library of thrillers and crime fiction. Here are some thoughts about one of her books, The Sentry, by Robert Crais.

Joe Pike and Elvis Cole are two of Crais' recurring characters, although it so far doesn't look as if my aunt had other titles in this series.  If a person was coming to this book in the context of the series, s/he might have different expectations. However, this was my first exposure to Pike and Cole. 

Robert Crais is an accomplished author, and his characters Joe and Elvis have a worldwide following, so even before I opened the cover I knew Crais would be doing a lot of things very well.  The mystery is well-conceived, the setting (Venice, California) adds enjoyable color, the viewpoints are clearly distinguished and well-chosen, the characters are all individual, believable, and interesting, and the suspense is written fairly effectively (more on that in a bit).

On the whole, the book rewards reading.

But. (You knew that was coming.) A major problem with noir heroes--for me, anyway--is the fact that they are Closed Men.

Tough. Hyper-competent. Emotionless. 

I kept imagining that if my writers' group was reading this as a manuscript, there'd be a lot of frustrated marginalia to the effect of "What is he feeling, here?  What is he thinking?"  

Joe Pike does not acknowledge, even to himself, that he has emotions, other than practicing a sort of Zen mind-set to keep himself from feeling his emotions. This makes for a distinctive character, I'll say that.

Unfortunately, the down-side is that he's also not terribly relatable, and the distance he keeps from his feelings also defeats some of the reactions a writer really wants his or her readers to be feeling at the climax.  

Joe does everything in his power to keep from feeling the very strong emotions that must certainly be in play when people are shooting at him, for instance, or when he is doing the Decisive Things noir heroes have to do. As a result we, the readers, don't really feel it very much.

In the writing, this emotionlessness can bleed over into characters who are supposed to be more in touch with their feelings, such as Elvis. At one dramatic point near the end of the book Elvis shed tears--but we do not feel his pain, so we (at least I) have no trouble staying dry-eyed. 

I'm sure Crais wasn't going for a multi-hankie tear-jerker, but if my character was crying, I'd want the readers to feel something.

Another problem I have with the Closed Man viewpoint is that Joe Pike seems always to know what to do next--but he doesn't clue the readers in to his thoughts. The result is a kind of myopic, "He went here.  He did this.  Next he went there.  He did that." 

Joe Pike does not explain himself. Either we "get it," or we don't, and he doesn't care which. He also does not second-guess himself, or appear to have many doubts--not even when he should. To me, that's not "strong," so much as kind of arrogant, and damned lucky more often than chance ought to allow.

He keeps his own counsel, and acts rather than speaking. His moral compass exists, but it's pointing in a somewhat different direction from most people's.  He's very selective whose pain he cares about, and he also seems to see a brighter, clearer line between "dirtbags" and "acceptable people" than most. I think in his own mind he's somewhere outside of either category.

Joe Pike doesn't care whether I like him or not. Unfortunately, by the end of the book I don't much care about him, either.

IMAGE CREDITS: the cover art is courtesy of Rainy Day Books' website, from the listing spotlighting the book.  The photo of Crais is by Julie Dennis Brothers, and is re-posted from his website bio page.

Book Review: Mummies and Murder!

Book Reviewed: The Keepsake (2009)

Author: Tess Gerritsen

Available from: Rainy Day Books, or other fine booksellers.

I was pre-sold to love this book.  I mean, mummies and murder!  What about that is not interesting?  I spotted this book on my aunt’s bookshelf when I was visiting last fall, and chose it with positive expectations.  However, I immediately ran into problems with it.

First problem: it starts with a prologue. I generally hate prologues.  I’ve rarely read one I felt delivered information we couldn’t have learned in the story itself. I've read so many pointless prologues, that lately  I have to fight to keep an open mind about the skill of the writer, whenever I run into another [expletive deleted] prologue.

Worse, there’s an unnamed, first-person narrator in this [expletive deleted] prologue, and s/he is muttering about fuzzy facts and talking in unspecified time frames.  I hate that.  It was cryptic to the point of I-started-skimming-very-rapidly.  Thank goodness that stuff is done with, when the [expletive deleted] prologue ends.  If it had gone on much longer I would never have finished the book.

Once I got into the story proper, the writing improved dramatically, but then I encountered what I came to think of as the “TV interference.” 

The names are the same, but TV changed things!

One reason I was intrigued to try the book was that it was billed as a “Rizzoli & Isles” novel.  Yep, I watch the show.  It’s not my utter favorite cop drama on TV (too many high-heel foot-chase scenes and long hair not pulled back at crime scenes or the morgue, for two reasons), but I like it enough to have programmed a “series record” command for it on my DVR.

Yeah, I know TV is a different medium and storytelling must be done in different ways, but I was not quite prepared to see exactly how much the TV show has deviated from the original books.  I kind of expected the characters to seem . . . familiar.

So I’m reading along, and--wait.  Frost is blond? And married?  

Jane has a husband and a daughter?  

Maura's in love with a priest??  Yikes!

Who are these people?  The names sound familiar, the setting is Boston . . . but woah.  Okay: not the TV show at all.  Major reset!  But once I stopped expecting them to be people with the same names that I knew from TV, I found the characters likable and interesting.

So, all right, I had some problems getting started.  But once I got past the [expletive deleted] prologue and the character-cognitive-dissonance, what about the story?  

Mummification: part of a unique M.O.!

Actually, that was pretty cool. Good villain, some logical but unexpected plot twists, plus did I mention the combination of mummies and murder?   

I liked Josephine, the murderer’s main "target," and especially the way she tried to fight back, even when she was at a huge disadvantage.  On the other hand, there were several times when she had maddening blind spots.

I did kind of see the end coming. It followed a  formula that's become kind of standard, especially on TV, and this wasn't written long enough ago to be a new approach. I would like for the author to have thought harder about "what if X realizes this, at that point?" to make the denouement take less predictable turns.

But (except for the prologue) it was pretty well written, and quite readable, and the archaeology angle was a lot of fun.  Would I say it was worth the time?  Yeah, I would.  But you probably could skip the prologue, and don’t expect the characters to be much like what you remember from TV!

IMAGE CREDITS: Many thanks to Tess Gerritsen's Website for the cover image!  The First Seasoon Rizzoli & Isles show poster is courtesy of the "Sylum Clan" Blog.  The photo of the mummy and sarcophagus is from the Dead Media Archive.

Book Review: A sure-fire author's semi-misfire

Book Reviewed: True Blue (2009)
Author: David Baldacci
Published by: Grand Central Publishing

I recently have been raiding my aunt’s bookshelf (I’m visiting), and just finished reading David Baldacci’s 2009 book True Blue.  It was compellingly written and held my interest throughout, but I found it ultimately unsatisfying.

The basic setup: Mace Perry is a former Washington DC cop who has just served two years in prison after being framed for crimes she did not (willingly) commit.  She’s the main protagonist.  Her sister Beth is the DC Police Chief, a fact that both complicates and simplifies her life. 

Her sort-of-accidental sidekick is a lawyer named Roy Kingman, who is a former collegiate basketball player and now works for a high-end law firm.  He discovers the second body of the book when he opens the fridge in the break room and it falls into his arms.

David Baldacci sure knows how to hook in a reader.

True Blue was one of those “over the top” books: exaggerated characters pulling badass shit and getting away with it.  Vast, deep government conspiracy.  Fabulous wealth and massive, corrupt power.  All that stuff. There was a lot of basketball, some patriotism, and a lot of ambiguous morality. 

I found its resolution unsatisfying because the protagonist solves the crime, but does not achieve her primary objective—and in the process, she and Roy break a lot of laws, for which they do not seem to answer. Although there appears to be a mutual attraction between Mace and Roy, we never get any action, beyond a fairly chaste kiss.

At the end of the book I don’t have much sense of “what happens next.”  What will Mace do now?  She’s still not a cop.  Will she and Roy wander off in separate directions?  What will Roy do, now that he’s been canned from his cushy job?  I checked to see if Baldacci wrote a sequel, but apparently not so far, so we may never know.

Image Credits: The cover image is courtesy of the author's website.  The True Blue page there includes a link for purchasing the book, as well as a short synopsis and background information. The photo of Baldacci is taken from an interview (well worth reading) on the Bitter Lawyer blog.