In Convictions
J P Jones gives us a familiar sort of can't-put-it-down detective thriller and
then gives it twists in unexpected ways that lift it out of the genre box and
places it into the category of being something remarkable--a noir novel with profound meditative resonance. I would borrow Melville's
subtitle from Pierre and recast the
title into Convictions, Or the
Ambiguities.
Tommy Baker is the experienced DC detective investigating
a brutal, racist murder of a young woman.
He hails from West Virginia and is the Outsider/Other who does not, has
never quite, fit into the Washington world of polarities and contradictions
that fall along familiar black-white, north-south, upper-lower class lines. Add in too the politics of a city that
lives and breathes nothing but.
Jones has crafted an incredibly tight, finely honed work
of suspense, a reader's delight of tension and carefully unfolded revelations
and turns. Even though the crime
gets solved, Baker feels loose ends remain and another murder happens, so the
one story complicates into a different story and our expectations and
comprehension must also complicate.
The resulting exploration of the certainties that drive each of the
characters becomes quite satisfying and a genuine examination of what each
means by truth, investigation, discrimination and justice.
