UNDER COLOR OF LAW, first-in-series LA-set The One Good(-Enough) Cop story

UNDER COLOR OF LAW
AARON PHILIP CLARK (Trevor Finnegan #1)
Thomas & Mercer (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle original, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The murder of a police recruit pins a Black LAPD detective in a deadly web where race, corruption, violence, and cover-ups intersect in this relevant, razor-sharp novel of suspense.

Black rookie cop Trevor “Finn” Finnegan aspires to become a top-ranking officer in the Los Angeles Police Department and fix a broken department. A fast-track promotion to detective in the coveted Robbery-Homicide Division puts him closer to achieving his goal.

Four years later, calls for police accountability rule the headlines. The city is teeming with protests for racial justice. When the body of a murdered Black academy recruit is found in the Angeles National Forest, Finn is tasked to investigate.

As pressure mounts to solve the crime and avoid a PR nightmare, Finn scours the underbelly of a volatile city where power, violence, and race intersect. But it’s Finn’s past experience as a beat cop that may hold the key to solving the recruit’s murder. The price? The end of Finn’s career…or his life.

I RECEIVED THIS AS PART OF THE FIRST READS SELECTIONS THROUGH AMAZON PRIME.

My Review: I was in a weird position in September 2021. I got my monthly free-because-you-have-Prime offerings from Amazon and, where I usually have no problem picking between two or three of the stories, I was *stuck* between two I really, really wanted to read...the situation was so bad and the deadline to make my choice was looming so I asked my bookish friends to choose between them for me.

A dark and twisty psychological thriller set in Nebraska lost out to this law'n'order-floutin' procedural thriller, though not by much. Either of them would've been fine by me. This story's victory was perfect, I figured, since its publication was set for 1 October and I was #Spooktobering with mysteries and thrillers instead of ghosts and werewolves and the like. And now, mirabile dictu, it's #Noirvember when the review comes out!

It really shows that this author is also a screenwriter. His first pages are a lights-and-sirens, pursuit-copter assisted chase that whipped past as fast as it would've on screen. The major notes in the symphony the author's prepared for us are clear; the problem he's decided to write about couldn't be more timely. What isn't ordinary is the PoV of a cop, a Black cop, on police brutality. On the department's culture, on what it means to try to be a Good Cop, a good Black man, and a decent human being in a system that has little room for any of those identities.

Trevor "Finn" Finnegan stepped off the straight and narrow early in his career at LAPD. What he did is not a mystery; but you should find out from his story. The results of his ethical compromise are simple: He climbed the ladder faster than a Black man should've and is roundly resented by all for it. He has a toxic relationship to his "high yellow" father (and hasn't it been an age since I've heard that term!), an ex-LAPD officer, that was always going to be fraught but never got better. Neither knew how to make it so...his mother's early death didn't help. The men aren't going to be besties, but they have a basic world-view compatibility: No one gives you nothing, just decide how much you'll pay for it.

But what Finn decides to pay is a price that doesn't make for good reading...or living. What happens as a result of this price, this devil's bargain, is devastating. It changes everything. I think it's a change for the better, but that's by no means sure....

Why this is only getting a 3.5-star rating from me comes down to the ghastly sexual politics. There's a pair of women with whom horndog Trevor is involved, in a weird off-kilter way, and his actions do not speak well of him. In relation to one of the women, he all but throws her privileged whiteness in her face while enacting, apparently unironically, male privilege in its most extreme form. He then imagines the other woman in his life will condone, forgive, and accept his bad behavior...and Author Clark's construct of her makes that not improbable. Ugh.

My revolted reservations aside, the writing is deft, it fails to fall into speechification as it sometimes hints at doing, and the plot is one I feel strongly needs to be told. Good people doing bad things for what they tell themselves are noble aims is an evergreen because it's not just relatable it's instructive. I'll read the next book in what promises to be a very interesting series.