Black Water Rising (Jay Porter #1) in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Feb 17, 2010 Shayla rated it liked it

I like Thrillers so I decided to give this one a shot. It was a quick read and yet a little slow, if you can understand that. There wasn't a great sense of urgency, and there wasn't immediate danger (except for the screams and murder at the beginning) until more than half way through the book.

Through Jay, Locke's main character, we learn about the civil rights struggle SNCC to the Panthers to other grass roots uprising, and seeing the carryover to the 80s. And seeing as it's set in TX, of course ...more

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Apr 04, 2020 Nadine in NY Jones rated it liked it

Shelves: mystery, suspense-thriller, fiction, hard-boiled, crime

This was good, but also frustrating and a bit bloated.

The foolishness of this errand is not lost on him. But he feels reeled in by her, yoked by his own curiosity and his inability to take at face value Elise’s promise to leave him out of her troubles. Somewhere deep down, he knows. It’s his own fault. He knows what the weight of his past has cost him, then and now. He knows the places where he can’t let go. Where his faith falls short.

His wife still out of the house, the dirty money still

This was good, but also frustrating and a bit bloated.

The foolishness of this errand is not lost on him. But he feels reeled in by her, yoked by his own curiosity and his inability to take at face value Elise’s promise to leave him out of her troubles. Somewhere deep down, he knows. It’s his own fault. He knows what the weight of his past has cost him, then and now. He knows the places where he can’t let go. Where his faith falls short.

His wife still out of the house, the dirty money still stashed inside his office, the man in the black Ford still at large, in possession of Jay’s .22…. He has not slept a solid night in days.

Or is it years?

He gets mixed up sometimes.

The eponymous “black water rising” is not - as I first thought (as, perhaps, we are meant to think?) the dark bayou water, but petroleum. It hovers in the background of this story but never takes center stage.

Jay Porter is the only one who owns center stage, as he darts back and forth between “keep my mouth shut” and “I just speak out”; between his wife and his past; between his father-in-law’s interest in a labor dispute and his own law practice. Jay spends a lot of time darting back and forth. For a guy who is determined to stay out of it, he sure keeps poking his nose in it. And that is a common trait in a protagonist who is a private detective (or, in this case, a lawyer), but it still felt inconsistent here.

I got really annoyed with the excessive flashbacks to Jay’s past as a rabble rousing college student demonstrating for civil rights. The flashbacks served only to deepen Jay’s character, but really had NOTHING to do with the plot. If it’s not moving the plot forward, I don’t want to read it, I want it excised.

Locke is a screenwriter, and that shows here. I’m surprised this book hasn’t been picked up for a movie. The scenes are all tailor-made for a dramatic suspense movie (or a suspenseful drama, depending on which way the director chooses to go).

I was disappointed that the women in the story did not play bigger roles. The mystery revolves around Elise, who may or may not have killed a man. But Elise is never more than a plot point. We aren’t meant to sympathize with her, and I never cared about her. Then there’s Jay’s secretary Eddie-Mae who takes his messages and asks to leave early and never plays a bigger role than that.

And finally there is Jay’s pregnant wife. Bernie feels important to the story, but I never fully understood their relationship. Did they love each other? Did they understand each other? Did they support each other? It’s Bernie’s father who keeps calling Jay away, but Bernie seems angry with Jay for doing that, at the same time she seems devoted to her father. Bernie’s role in this plot is to be the vulnerable pregnant belly, the reason for Jay to be out on the bayou that night, the reason Jay became involved with Elise, the connection between Jay and the striking dock workers. But Bernie could be removed from this book and not much would change, all of those pieces could fall into place in another way, without her. (It seems that Locke realized Bernie’s superfluity, since she removes her from the next book, Bernie is conveniently dead.)

And, I never really liked or cared about Jay.

The final insult was the ending: nothing is truly resolved. If Locke had not written another Jay Porter book, I would never even know if Jay survived the multiple hits put on him.

Although I felt this book was bloated, and sagged in the middle under its own weight, I still liked Locke’s writing, and I will pick up another book from her; perhaps not another Jay Porter book, though. And hopefully her next book is less bloated.
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May 22, 2019 Jenny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

As a reader of mysteries, I’ve always been a fan of the more hardboiled variety and especially those with a strong sense of place—George Pelecanos writing about Washington D.C., Dennis Lehane writing about Boston, James Lee Burke writing about Louisiana, and most recently, Craig Johnson writing about Absaroka County (not a real county) in Wyoming. Well, now I can add Attica Locke to this list. Her focus is East Texas and her novels are rich and complex, featuring flawed protagonists, who find th As a reader of mysteries, I’ve always been a fan of the more hardboiled variety and especially those with a strong sense of place—George Pelecanos writing about Washington D.C., Dennis Lehane writing about Boston, James Lee Burke writing about Louisiana, and most recently, Craig Johnson writing about Absaroka County (not a real county) in Wyoming. Well, now I can add Attica Locke to this list. Her focus is East Texas and her novels are rich and complex, featuring flawed protagonists, who find themselves in tricky situations at the intersection of race, class, and power.

Bluebird, Bluebird is my book club’s choice for July (we meet next week!) but I got Attica Locke’s 2009 debut novel, Black Water Rising, for Christmas and ended up reading that first. In Black Water Rising, Locke tells the story of Jay Porter, a newly licensed African-American lawyer in Houston, whose practice is in a strip mall and whose clients leave a bit to be desired. It’s 1981 and Porter is struggling to leave his past behind. As a college student in the late 1960’s, he got involved in radical politics; a demonstration gone wrong (along with a connection to Stokely Carmichael) almost landed him a lengthy prison sentence. Saved by the graces of one juror (the only black person on the panel), Porter turned his life around and now is trying to build a good life for himself and his pregnant wife, Bernie.

Porter’s goals soon meet a harsh reality. He and Bernie are celebrating her birthday on Buffalo Bayou in a shabby boat that Porter secured for free from a client and is piloted by the client’s cousin, an elderly man. Not only is the situation not the “moonlight cruise” Porter had envisioned when he arranged it but the couple ends up witness to a crime. They hear screams, then gunshots, and then they see a woman in the water. Porter jumps in and saves her but she is not forthcoming about what happened. The couple takes her to the police station and assume that their involvement is done but as you might guess, that is just the beginning. Soon people are dying, coverups are happening, and Porter’s past comes back with a vengeance.
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Feb 10, 2017 Sarah rated it liked it

I found this book really difficult to get through. It took me three weeks to finish, and it felt like an eternity.

The writing is lovely, the characters fully developed, there's a strong sense of place. But as a mystery, the plot really dragged for me. I find it much more interesting to think of this as a story about a person rediscovering himself, getting back to his core values, remembering who it is he was meant to be. That's the more compelling part of this plot, to my mind. It's when this c ...more

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Jan 08, 2020 Loretta rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobooks, crime-and-mystery

This was very very good. The audio narration was excellent; Jay Porter is a great flawed character and wow this book goes so many wonderful rich hard places. Attica Locke deserves all the praise she's been getting and I can't wait to get into the next book by her. Highly recommended. ...more

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