BLUE AVENUE

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.