Blue Avenue

Starred review from October 13, 2014
Noir fiction doesn’t get much darker than Wiley’s thriller introducing police detective Daniel Turner, who is largely an observer in his first outing. Disreputable Jacksonville, Fla., businessman William “BB” Byrd and his casually brutal cohort, Charles, pursue a serial killer who has just murdered Belinda Mabry, the woman who was BB’s first lover 25 years earlier. Even if it means further alienating his own precariously balanced family, BB can’t stop interrogating Jacksonville’s sleaziest pimps, prostitutes, and politicians to find out what happened to Belinda in life and death. Unpleasant secrets keep surfacing, sometimes in the investigation but also in the investigators, and Wiley (A Bad Night’s Sleep) is extremely good at creating an atmosphere of menacing dread as BB learns more about the dead woman and himself. New shocks occur all the way to the last page—and continue as readers reflect on what they’ve just witnessed. Agent: Philip Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency.

November 1, 2014
Wiley moves south from his three tales of Chicago shamus Joe Kozmarski (A Bad Night's Sleep, 2011, etc.) to Florida, where an even less heroic sleuth faces an even seamier mystery.Twenty-five years ago, Belinda Mabry was William "BB" Byrd's first love. Now his friend Lt. Detective Daniel Turner of the Jacksonville Police wants him to identify her body. It's Belinda all right, tied neck and heels, shrouded in plastic and dumped in a pile of garbage. And she's not the only victim on Daniel's docket. Streetwalkers Tonya Richmond (black) and Ashley Littleton (white) have already been killed in much the same way. But Belinda's the one BB cares about, and soon he's ringing all the wrong doorbells, meeting all the wrong people-especially Belinda's no-good brother, Bobby, and her son, Terrence Stilman-and talking himself into a world of trouble. Luckily, he can call on tough, elderly hireling Charles Tucker whenever he needs help: "He fixed what needed fixing. He broke what needed breaking." Even though BB, unlike Belinda, is white, Wiley echoes Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins books in both his storytelling and his first-person voice-pared down, digressive and frankly revealing. As BB works to connect the murders to the accidental death of a good-time Jamaican girl in the middle of an experiment in erotic asphyxia, the plot, fueled by a steadily rising body count, boils furiously until it reaches a climax that's both utterly predictable and powerfully unnerving. Repeated doses of strong sexual violence make this one definitely not for the kiddies. First of a series, though you have to wonder who's left in Jacksonville for the sequels.

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Starred review from November 1, 2014

William Byrd (BB) is a Jacksonville, FL, businessman who owns four gas stations inherited from his father. He and his wife are estranged but live together in the same house, along with their teenage son, who hates everyone and spends his time in his room drawing pornographic graphic novels. BB gets a call one morning from an old friend, Det. Daniel Turner, who asks him to identify a body found wrapped in cellophane on the rundown Blue Avenue. BB recognizes the victim as an African American girl named Belinda Mabry, with whom he was in love when he was 17. As the investigation reveals that Belinda was the victim of a serial killer, BB brings in his mysterious buddy Charles to help him find the murderer. Charles fixes what needs fixing, no matter what is involved. VERDICT The Shamus Award-winning author of the Chicago-set "Joseph Kozmarksi" series (A Bad Night's Sleep) introduces an intriguing antihero in this excellent noir that will attract readers who appreciate the anguished protagonists of Steve Hamilton and Loren D. Estleman.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2014
A beautiful black woman is found dead, and William Byrd thinks he should do something about it. They were lovers once. He's a businessman now and a family man, but the dead woman has stayed in that corner of his mind where swoony dreams live. He must learn what happened. So begins a story stuffed with stock characters that are, finally, not what they seem. Byrd starts as a Hitchcock hero, an innocent pulled into a corrupt world. His pal is another familiar figure, the rumpled homicide detective who warns the hero to stay clear. There's even the endearingly vicious friend, like Win in Harlan Coben's Myron Bolitar series, who does the brutal stuff the hero can't or won't do. Then the veil is yanked away. The dream girl was part of something bad, and the cop and the tough are maybe not the hero's friends. And Byrd? He'd be at home in a Faulkner novel. Parts of the novel read like essays rather than narrative, too much description slowing and distracting. Still, the revelations will reward readers' patience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)