Viper nabs final novel in Attica Locke’s Highway 59 trilogy

Viper Books, the crime imprint of Serpent’s Tail, has snapped up rights to the final novel in Attica Locke’s Highway 59 trilogy.

Managing director Rebecca Gray acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Nancy Wiese at Little, Brown US. The book will be published in hardback and e-book on 26th September 2024,by publishing director Miranda Jewess. 

"Having handed in his badge and in fear of standing trial thanks to his mother’s machinations, Darren finds himself working off the books," the synopsis says. "A Black girl at an all-white sorority at a nearby college is missing, her belongings tossed in a dumpster... Yet as he sets out to find a girl whose family don’t want her found, it is Darren’s own family history that may be brought painfully into the light."

Locke said: “When I started writing the Highway 59 book series, Trump hadn’t been elected, George Floyd hadn’t happened, there was no fear of a global pandemic. The world has changed so much, and so has Darren Mathews. He, like so many of us, is wrestling with what it means to be a moral human being in times that feel increasingly amoral and terrifying. And he is, as ever, wrestling with his role as a Texas Ranger, as a man of law. All this – and his mother is back."

The author’s previous books include Heaven, My Home, a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, Bluebird, Bluebird, which won the CWA Steel Dagger and an Edgar Award, and Pleasantville, which won the 2016 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Locke’s debut Black Water Rising was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2010. All four titles were published with Serpent’s Tail. 

Gray said: "Attica is one of the authors people ask me about most often, so we are thrilled that her next book is ready, particularly at this pivotal moment. She has always written powerfully political novels, and so her voice feels essential as we await the next US election. I’m so grateful for this deeply emotional and – of course – compulsively readable work."

Jewess added: “Attica Locke’s novels bring together politics, social commentary, evocative prose and hard-hitting crime elements; her powerful storytelling is unmatched. I’m delighted to be publishing her on the Viper list.”