That’s because with this novel Locke has opened up not just her writing but also the parameters of the form. “The Cutting Season” does an even better job. “Black Water Rising,” an Edgar and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, did this beautifully. This is an essential rule of the hard-boiled thriller: to develop drama from the mystery of personality, to find in the individual a microcosm of the compromise and corruption of the larger world. But if that allows the novel to operate on a variety of levels - social, historical, cultural - it remains, primarily, an evocation of character. Set in 1981, “Black Water Rising” is nothing if not authoritative Locke, who lives in Los Angeles, was raised in Houston and understands how the city works. How much do I admire Attica Locke’s second novel, “The Cutting Season”? To answer that, I need to go back to her 2009 debut, “Black Water Rising,” which told the story of Jay Porter, an African American attorney in Houston, a former radical in full retreat from the unresolved issues, political and personal, of his past. Harper/Dennis Lehane Books: 374 pp., $25.99
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