Attica Locke - Author
About the Author
Attica Locke's first novel, Black Water Rising, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, nominated for an Edgar Award, an NAACP Image Award and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Attica is also a screenwriter who has written for Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, HBO, Dreamworks and Silver Pictures. She was a fellow at the Sundance Institute's Feature Filmmakers Lab and is a graduate of Northwestern University. A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, with her husband and daughter.
Author photo © Jenny Walters
Featured books by Attica Locke
Bluebird, Bluebird
My friend Alafair Burke told me to read this book or she would stop talking to me. She was right to put the threat at that level because this is simply one of the best books I’ve read in the last ten years. Like Alafair, Attica is both a writer and a lawyer, so she really understands her material. The thing that got me right out of the gate is that the narrator is a black Texas Ranger. We don’t often see police procedurals written from the perspective of black law enforcement officers, or in the rare cases that we do, those officers tend to come across as anti-heroes. Attica takes on the racial issues at the core of this story with an unblinking eye, and the reader is all the better for her honesty. You can see why this woman has won or been shortlisted for just about every major award there is, including the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction (for Pleasantville in 2016) Selected by our Early Summer Guest Editor 2021 Karin Slaughter
Pleasantville
Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016. 1996 election night in Pleasantville, a suburb of Houston built in 1949 as a community for “Negro families of means and class”, home now to many who have been involved in marches for greater equality. The former police chief hopes to be the first black mayor but the District Attorney runs against him. Then a teenage girl disappears, the third, each found dead six days later. This one is no exception. A fellow is arrested and we follow his black lawyer, Jay’s involvement plus a host of strong characters. Very atmospheric with a real feel for the area and its people, this is both a political thriller and a murder mystery full of twists and turns set against the mayoral election campaign and compensation that is expected from an oil company for pollution, something that features in Jay’s first appearance in Black Water Rising. Shortlisted for the Goldsboro Gold Dagger Award 2015.
Pleasantville
Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016. Shortlisted for the Goldsboro Gold Dagger Award 2015. April 2015 Book of the Month. 1996 election night in Pleasantville, a suburb of Houston built in 1949 as a community for “Negro families of means and class”, home now to many who have been involved in marches for greater equality. The former police chief hopes to be the first black mayor but the District Attorney runs against him. Then a teenage girl disappears, the third, each found dead six days later. This one is no exception. A fellow is arrested and we follow his black lawyer, Jay’s involvement plus a host of strong characters. Very atmospheric with a real feel for the area and its people, this is both a political thriller and a murder mystery full of twists and turns set against the mayoral election campaign and compensation that is expected from an oil company for pollution, something that features in Jay’s first appearance in Black Water Rising.
Pleasantville
Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016. 1996 election night in Pleasantville, a suburb of Houston built in 1949 as a community for “Negro families of means and class”, home now to many who have been involved in marches for greater equality. The former police chief hopes to be the first black mayor but the District Attorney runs against him. Then a teenage girl disappears, the third, each found dead six days later. This one is no exception. A fellow is arrested and we follow his black lawyer, Jay’s involvement plus a host of strong characters. Very atmospheric with a real feel for the area and its people, this is both a political thriller and a murder mystery full of twists and turns set against the mayoral election campaign and compensation that is expected from an oil company for pollution, something that features in Jay’s first appearance in Black Water Rising. Shortlisted for the Goldsboro Gold Dagger Award 2015.
Pleasantville
Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016. Shortlisted for the Goldsboro Gold Dagger Award 2015. April 2015 Book of the Month. 1996 election night in Pleasantville, a suburb of Houston built in 1949 as a community for “Negro families of means and class”, home now to many who have been involved in marches for greater equality. The former police chief hopes to be the first black mayor but the District Attorney runs against him. Then a teenage girl disappears, the third, each found dead six days later. This one is no exception. A fellow is arrested and we follow his black lawyer, Jay’s involvement plus a host of strong characters. Very atmospheric with a real feel for the area and its people, this is both a political thriller and a murder mystery full of twists and turns set against the mayoral election campaign and compensation that is expected from an oil company for pollution, something that features in Jay’s first appearance in Black Water Rising.
The Cutting Season
Gripping, atmospheric and tragic. Top class literary crime fiction from the Orange Prize shortlisted author of Black Water Rising. Just after dawn, Caren walks the grounds of Belle Vie, the plantation house in Louisiana that she has managed for four years. Today she sees nothing unusual, apart from some ground that has been dug up by the fence bordering the sugar cane fields. Assuming an animal has been out after dark, she asks the gardener to tidy it up. It is a dead body. Attica Locke once again provides an unblinking commentary on politics, race, the law, family and love.
The Cutting Season
September 2012 eBook of the Month. Gripping, atmospheric and tragic. Top class literary crime fiction from the Orange Prize shortlisted author of Black Water Rising. Just after dawn, Caren walks the grounds of Belle Vie, the plantation house in Louisiana that she has managed for four years. Today she sees nothing unusual, apart from some ground that has been dug up by the fence bordering the sugar cane fields. Assuming an animal has been out after dark, she asks the gardener to tidy it up. It is a dead body. Attica Locke once again provides an unblinking commentary on politics, race, the law, family and love.
The Cutting Season
Gripping, atmospheric and tragic. Top class literary crime fiction from the Orange Prize shortlisted author of Black Water Rising. Just after dawn, Caren walks the grounds of Belle Vie, the plantation house in Louisiana that she has managed for four years. Today she sees nothing unusual, apart from some ground that has been dug up by the fence bordering the sugar cane fields. Assuming an animal has been out after dark, she asks the gardener to tidy it up. It is a dead body. Attica Locke once again provides an unblinking commentary on politics, race, the law, family and love.
The Cutting Season
September 2012 eBook of the Month. Gripping, atmospheric and tragic. Top class literary crime fiction from the Orange Prize shortlisted author of Black Water Rising. Just after dawn, Caren walks the grounds of Belle Vie, the plantation house in Louisiana that she has managed for four years. Today she sees nothing unusual, apart from some ground that has been dug up by the fence bordering the sugar cane fields. Assuming an animal has been out after dark, she asks the gardener to tidy it up. It is a dead body. Attica Locke once again provides an unblinking commentary on politics, race, the law, family and love.
Black Water Rising
An atmospheric and stylish thriller from a new author, with comparisons to John Grisham. A tightly woven plot will keep you involved and intrigued until the end. "If you liked Chinatown, you’ll love this. A proper rollicking read. Anyone I’ve given this to just can’t put it down.… It’s just really brilliant and I’d thoroughly recommend it.” Miranda Sawyer (Orange Prize for Fiction 2010 judging panel). Shortlisted for the prestigious 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction.
Other books by Attica Locke
Heaven, My Home
A Guardian Book of the Year An FT Best Book of 2019 A Sunday Times Book of the Year Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2020 When the young son of an Aryan Brotherhood of Texas gang captain goes missing, Ranger Darren Mathews has no choice but to investigate the crime. Following the election of Donald Trump, a new wave of racial violence has swept the state. Dark, swampy and filled with skeletal trees, Caddo Lake is so large it crosses into Lousiana. This is deep country and the rule of law doesn't mean much to the Brotherhood, beyond what it can do for them. A further complication is that the Brotherhood is squatting on the land of a former Freedmen's community, and one of the last descendants of these former slaves is actually a suspect in the possible murder of the missing boy. Instructed by his lieutenant to use the investigation to gather more evidence that might help to take down the Texas chapter of the Brotherhood, Darren is playing very dangerous game indeed.
Cutting Season
The Cutting Season is a rare murder mystery with heft, a historical novel that thrills, a page-turner that makes you think. Attica Locke is a dazzling writer with a conscience.Dolen Perkins-Valdez, New York Times bestselling author of WenchAttica Lockes breathtaking debut novel, Black Water Rising, won resounding acclaim from major publications coast-to-coast and from respected crime fiction masters like James Ellroy and George Pelecanos, earning this exciting new author comparisons to Dennis Lehane, Scott Turow, and Walter Mosley. Locke returns with The Cutting Season, a second novel easily as gripping and powerful as her firsta heart-pounding thriller that interweaves two murder mysteries, one on Belle Vie, a historic landmark in the middle of Lousianas Sugar Cane country, and one involving a slave gone missing more than one hundred years earlier. Black Water Rising was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, an Edgar Award, and an NAACP Image Award, and was short-listed for the Orange Prize in the U.K. The Cutting Season has been selected by bestselling author Dennis Lehane as the first pick for his new line of books at HarperCollins.
Black Water Rising
Attica Lockea writer and producer of FOXs Empiredelivers an engrossing, complex, and cinematic thriller about crime and racial justiceLos Angeles TimesBook 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 TimesAtmospheric deeply nuanced... akin to George Pelecanos or Dennis Lehane.... Subtle and compelling.New York Times