Blue Avenue

This is an unusual and highly captivating book. The characters are not superheroes but flesh and blood human beings, warts and all. The story is fascinating and full of twists and turns. Concepts of good and evil, right and wrong have no place here. The suspense builds as the story continues, and resolutions appear and fade as time continues. In one sense this is a love story, the story of a love that lived alone for twenty-five years and still drove several of the characters to dramatic changes in their lives. I hope this will be a series, because it is very interesting and entertaining. I recommend it to you.

From 1999 to 2007 I called Jacksonville, Florida home, so I can tell you firsthand that Michael Wiley's Blue Avenue, set in Jacksonville, captures the setting the way a photograph captures a moment in time. Despite being the largest city in America by area, Jacksonville is still very much a small town with a good ol' boy mentality. And where you find that mentality, you'll often find corruption.
Blue Avenue begins with William "BB" Byrd being asked by Detective Daniel Turner to identify the body of Belinda Mabry, BB's first love. Belinda and her family had moved from Jacksonville twenty-five years earlier following some racially-motivated attacks on Belinda and her younger brother, Bobby. Before being told by Turner that her body has been found among a pile of trash, BB had no idea that Belinda had returned to town.
The crime scene details match those of two other recently-deceased prostitutes, BB learns from Turner's partner, who presses BB as if he's a suspect, which isn't surprising given BB's troubled past, which hovers over him the way the scent of coffee from the Maxwell House plant permeates downtown Jacksonville. "Makes me want to puke and I've been doing this for eight years."
"How do you know me?" I asked.
"Everyone knows you, BB. You don't wash off so easy."
"I never tried to."
Of the violent events that make up BB's past, the one that best illustrates his character occurred when he was in college. Five men were beating up three Honduran men following a football game won by the team of which the Hondurans were fans. While the locals stood and watched the beating, BB stepped in and took on the five men, killing one and breaking the neck of another. A charge of homicide against BB was eventually dropped once the local media let slip the circumstances of the fight. It did end BB's college days, though.
Despite his ability to handle himself quite well, BB tries to avoid conflict. He leaves the rough stuff to his sidekick, Charles, who he calls upon reluctantly, primarily because of the pleasure Charles gets from hurting people. Throughout much of Blue Avenue I found Charles to be the sidekick type common in mainstream crime fiction, like Harlan Coben's Win or Robert Crais' Joe Pike. In my opinion, these kinds of characters drain the suspense from a book because their bulletproof nature will always get them out of harrowing situations. Thankfully, Wiley puts a new twist on Charles that doesn't redeem the character, but does prevent Blue Avenue from becoming just another crime novel featuring a hero with a code and his break-bones-first-ask-questions- later sidekick who serves no purpose other than to be the southern- facing point of the protagonist's moral compass.
BB and Charles carve a destructive path across Jacksonville in search of Belinda's killer. They find corrupt politicians and wealthy businessmen whose influence they believe grants them the ability to be lawless without impunity.
I found it odd that Blue Avenue's cover advertises it as "A Daniel Turner Thriller," which is kind of like saying Ian Fleming's James Bond novels are about Q. Yes, Turner puts BB on his path by asking him to identify Belinda's body, but he is a tertiary character, at best, only popping in here and there to warn BB that he is mucking up the investigation and risking arrest himself.
After BB and Charles break into the apartment of one of the deceased prostitutes and find her roommate, Brianna Sumner, has been killed in the same manner as the others, Turner shows up at BB's house and proposes a theory as to why the killer would risk exposure to kill Sumner. Turner's theory is that one of two people have spooked the killer, the first being Brianna Sumner, who may have been told something pertinent by her roommate prior to her murder.
"Sounds reasonable," I said. "Who's the other one?"
"You," Daniel said. "I pulled you in to identify Belinda's body and you start poking your nose into everyone's lives like the idiot bastard you are. You might've poked your nose in too deep and made the killer nervous.Maybe the killer thought that if you got to Brianna Sumner, as you eventually did, she would tell you something she shouldn't."
Blue Avenue is a short novel made even shorter by its frenetic pace. If it were a movie you couldn't take a bathroom break or make a popcorn run without missing something. BB is a character haunted by a promise he failed to deliver on years ago. His drive to right that wrong while risking a total personal loss makes him the kind of protagonist I prefer to read. If Blue Avenue turns out to be the last crime novel I read in 2014, then the year will end on a high note.