Underground Airlines

Starred review from May 2, 2016
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man meets Blade Runner in this outstanding alternate history thriller from Edgar-winner Winters (The Last Policeman). Victor, an African-American bounty hunter for the U.S. Marshals Service, possesses a supreme talent for tracking down runaway slaves in a world in which there was no Civil War and slavery still exists in four Southern states. He’s a master of disguise and dissembling. Victor tracks a runaway slave code-named Jackdaw to Indianapolis, Ind., where he ingratiates himself with Father Barton, a purported leader of an abolitionist organization called Underground Airlines, and succeeds in penetrating the group. But soon thereafter Victor impulsively befriends Martha Flowers, a down-on-her-luck white woman traveling with her young biracial son, Lionel, a kindness that soon jeopardizes Victor’s carefully constructed cover identity. The novel’s closing section contains several breathtaking reversals, a genuinely disturbing revelation, and an exhilarating final course of action for Victor. Agent: Joelle Delbourgo, Joelle Delbourgo Associates.

May 1, 2016
Imagine: there was no Civil War, and the Confederacy has morphed into a low-tech Matrix. That's the territory that Winters (The Last Policeman, 2012, etc.) explores in this memorable tale. It's a scenario worthy of Philip K. Dick: the U.S. is still part-slave, part-free, with the "Hard Four" states--a unified North and South Carolina foremost among them--clinging resolutely to the old ways even as those pesky moralists the Europeans "draw no distinction between the slavery-practicing states and the slavery-tolerating ones" and as right-thinking Northerners figure out ways to resist the modern equivalent of the Fugitive Slave Act. Winters probes the possibilities: outside the Hard Four, who benefits from the trade in human flesh? Where do new slaves come from, now that transcontinental traffic is banned? How deeply can his antiheroic hero, a manumitted slave-turned-bounty hunter currently calling himself Victor, participate in the system without being forever stained? He has his motives, understandable if not noble, that send him careening into other people's self-interests; he's on the hunt for a runaway named Jackdaw who may have hopped a plane for China with a pile of Southern T-shirts--or who may instead have made his way to someplace relatively safe, like Indianapolis. For the most part, Winters neatly blends dystopian fiction with old-fashioned procedural. The story gets a little wobbly toward the end, with Boys from Brazil undertones more befitting sci-fi, a genre in which Winters has also worked. Readers with a strong attachment to verisimilitude may balk at the strange turn, but in the end, the twist makes good sense. If it lacks all the dramatic punch it might have had--the storyline hesitates at a couple of key moments, just when Victor is making his most disturbing discoveries--Winters' yarn still works. Smart and well paced. The story could use a little fine-tuning, but it moves deftly from a terrific premise and builds to a satisfying conclusion.

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April 1, 2016
Winters' splendid The Last Policeman trilogy was set in a version of the contemporary world that was soon to be destroyed; his new novel is also set in the contemporary world but in an alternate versionone in which the Civil War never happened. Slavery, even today, is still the law in four American states. When Victor, a young African American who works for the U.S. Marshals Service, is tasked with locating a runaway slave, he doesn't plan on going up against a notorious abolitionist movement, or on discovering the hidden truths of his own country. This is a daring and very well constructed novel; readers who enjoyed the Last Policeman novels will find the same intelligent characterization and attention to time and place here. Pair this with Brendan Dubois' Resurrection Day (1999), which takes place in an equally intriguing alternate world, one in which the Cuban Missile Crisis has erupted into nuclear war.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2016

Winters's The Last Policeman won the 2012 Edgar Award for best debut mystery and has sold 91,000 copies, but while this new book is touted as a thriller, it would seem to be much more. The setting looks like contemporary America, but the Civil War was never fought, and slavery persists in the so-called Hard Four states. A young black man named Victor works as a bounty hunter for the U.S. Marshall Service, tamping down memories of his plantation childhood as he infiltrates an abolitionist cell called the Underground Airlines. He's in pursuit of the runaway slave Jackdaw, whom the authorities really, really want. Victor doesn't wish to compromise his own freedom, but he's starting to realize that there are some terrible secrets at the heart of the government. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2016

In this alternative history, President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated en route to his inauguration. His death leads legislators to come together with one last proposal to keep the Union intact. It works, and today the status of slavery is decided state by state. In the Hard Four states, "peebs" (Persons Bound to Labor) are legally enchained, working 12 hours on and eight off. If a peeb escapes, the federal government is enjoined to find and return him to his owners. Victor works undercover for the U.S. Marshals, tracking down other black men. Now he's hunting a peeb named Jackdaw. Something's wrong, though, and he can't figure out what. Fast paced and filled with menace, the story has an ambience that makes it special. In Victor's supposedly "free" world, everywhere there are traps for people of color--free doesn't mean equal and definitely doesn't mean safe. What's startling is that Victor's experiences could well happen in the contemporary world. VERDICT Explosive, well plotted, and impossible to put down, this alt-hist by the Edgar Award-winning author of the "Last Policeman" trilogy will attract readers of all genres. [See Prepub Alert, 1/25/16.]

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2016

In this alternative history, President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated en route to his inauguration. His death leads legislators to come together with one last proposal to keep the Union intact. It works, and today the status of slavery is decided state by state. In the Hard Four states, "peebs" (Persons Bound to Labor) are legally enchained, working 12 hours on and eight off. If a peeb escapes, the federal government is enjoined to find and return him to his owners. Victor works undercover for the U.S. Marshals, tracking down other black men. Now he's hunting a peeb named Jackdaw. Something's wrong, though, and he can't figure out what. Fast paced and filled with menace, the story has an ambience that makes it special. In Victor's supposedly "free" world, everywhere there are traps for people of color--free doesn't mean equal and definitely doesn't mean safe. What's startling is that Victor's experiences could well happen in the contemporary world. VERDICT Explosive, well plotted, and impossible to put down, this alt-hist by the Edgar Award-winning author of the "Last Policeman" trilogy will attract readers of all genres. [See Prepub Alert, 1/25/16.]

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.