Black Water Rising: A Novel (Jay Porter Series)
by Attica Locke

Attica Locke—a writer and producer of FOX’s Empire—delivers an engrossing, complex, and cinematic thriller about crime and racial justiceLos Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist (Mystery/Thriller)
Edgar Award Nominee (Best First Novel)
The Orange Prize for Fiction (Shortlist)“A near-perfect balance of trenchant social commentary, rich characterizations, and action-oriented plot…. Attica Locke [is] a writer wise beyond her years.”?— Los Angeles Times“Atmospheric… deeply nuanced… akin to George Pelecanos or Dennis Lehane…. Subtle and compelling.”?— New York Times.

"I may be the luckiest writer alive, and I am certainly the most humbled.

Black Water Rising has been nominated for an Edgar Award, an NAACP Image Award, a Strand Magazine Critics Award, and is a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. And just this morning [April 20th 2010] it was announced that the book is on the short list for the Orange Prize for Fiction, one of the most prestigious awards for literature in the UK.

Black Water Rising is now in paperback. Help spread the word about a little book that’s catching a lot of people’s attention. If you already have a copy, buy two more for your friends. And please pass this email along…"

Many thanks!
xo Attica Locke (Tuesday, April 20, 2010)

Writing in the tradition of Dennis Lehane and Greg Iles, Attica Locke, a powerful new voice in American fiction, delivers a brilliant debut thriller that readers will not soon forget.

Jay Porter is hardly the lawyer he set out to be. His most promising client is a low-rent call girl and he runs his fledgling law practice out of a dingy strip mall. But he's long since made peace with not living the American Dream and carefully tucked away his darkest sins: the guns, the FBI file, the trial that nearly destroyed him.

Houston, Texas, 1981. It is here that Jay believes he can make a fresh start. That is, until the night in a boat out on the bayou when he impulsively saves a woman from drowning—and opens a Pandora's box. Her secrets put Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him his practice, his family, and even his life. But before he can get to the bottom of a tangled mystery that reaches into the upper echelons of Houston's corporate power brokers, Jay must confront the demons of his past.

With pacing that captures the reader from the first scene through an exhilarating climax, Black Water Rising marks the arrival of an electrifying new talent.