Ranger Darren Mathews is tough, honour-bound, and profoundly alive in corrupt world. I loved everything about this book' - Ann Patchett 'Locke's mesmerising new novel bears all the hallmarks of modern crime fiction: the alcoholic protagonist with the damaged marriage; the townsfolk who close rank against outsiders; the small-town law enforcement agent with murky loyalties. But Bluebird, Bluebird is a true original in the way it twists these conventions into a narrative of exhilarating immediacy ... Locke has a vivid sense of characterisation, using everything from dialect to the fabric of one's clothes to make subtle class distinctions and depict mental states ... Locke is building a compelling body of work. In this age of enduring and renewed racial tensions, we need her voice more than ever.' - Guardian Highway 59 is the forgotten route that connects the backwoods towns across the state of Texas. It's a place that time - and justice - seem to have forgotten. When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules--a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home. When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders - a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman - have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes - and save himself in the process - before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt. A rural noir suffused with the unique music, color, and nuance of East Texas, Bluebird, Bluebird is an exhilarating, timely novel about the collision of race and justice in America. The first in a blockbuster series set along Highway 59, history casts a long shadow in this high-stakes, small town thriller.