No Witness But The Moon by Suzanne Chazin (Tuesday Intros & Teaser Tuesday)

I honestly don't know why I'm so enthralled with Suzanne Chazin's Jimmy Vega books. They aren't pleasant. They aren't funny. They aren't cozy. There are no ghosts or vampires or faeries or wizards. They're intense and thought-provoking and I don't seem to be able to read them without a tightening in my chest and an almost constant lump in my throat. They make me uneasy and rarely are the feelings that they provoke warm and fuzzy ones.

No Witness But The Moon is the third Jimmy Vega book and just as emotionally disturbing for me as the first two were -- and just as gripping and "ohmygoodness I can't put it down." I suppose it's possible to read them as stand-alones, but you'll understand so much more about the characters and their issues if you read them in order. 

(click on the book covers to see the rambles)

In this latest installment, homicide detective Jimmy Vega is on his way to his immigrant-activist girlfriend Adele's place when he hears over his radio that there's a break-in nearby his current location. Since he's so close he arrives on the scene first and goes in pursuit of the suspect and, believing that the man has a weapon and is about to use it, shoots him. When it turns out that the suspect was an unarmed immigrant with no prior record, the media has a freaking field day tearing him apart. The whole ordeal torments Vega mentally and emotionally -- especially when he discovers that the dead man not only had ties to his girlfriend, but also to his mother whose murder has gone unsolved for two years.

Once again, Chazin delves deep into the psychological nuances of both the immigrant society and the members of law enforcement and their families brilliantly. She doesn't shy away from the hard topics or the uncomfortable feels in the world. I look forward to revisiting Jimmy again in the future and I'm hugely thankful to Kensington and NetGalley for making this available to me.

"First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" is the first paragraph (or two) of a book being read now or in the future and is hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea. "Teaser Tuesday" from Books and a Beat asks for a random line or two from anywhere in the book currently being read. 

Suzanne Chazin's A Blossom of Bright Light

If I didn't trust Kensington books as much as I did I may not have read past the first dead body discovery of Suzanne Chazin's A Blossom of Bright Light.
It was more than I can usual bring myself to handle. It was a newborn.

However, since I have come to trust Kensington (who gave me the book through NetGalley to read ahead of its October 27th release), and since I loved the first in the series so much, I had to keep reading.

Even after I had accurately figured out "whodunnit" well before the 50% mark,  I had to keep reading.

I don't always like Jimmy Vega ... or his girlfriend ... or his co-workers ... or his daughter ... but I had to keep reading.

Suzanne Chazin's Lake Holly isn't some place that I would ever want to visit, even though I probably wouldn't have to travel outside of my own county to find someplace similar. It's too uncomfortable -- too uncozy. At the same time, though, I had to keep reading.

I can't seem to be able to pull myself away once I start reading one of the books. Although it's "fiction" I know from reading the notes at the end of the first book that a lot of the side stories came from actual immigrants (documented and otherwise) Chazin has encountered and interviewed. The characters even feel more like mere characters in a book -- they feel like people. Real people with real angst and real hopes.

Part of the whole inability to pull myself away from their stories results in the books being fairly quick reads. According to Amazon, A Blossom of Bright Light is going to be 368 pages long when it's released in a few weeks. I added it to my "Currently Reading" shelf on Goodreads at 6:33am yesterday morning (according to the auto-update to my Facebook wall). It is now just around 5:30am so it took less than 24 hours WITH sleeping, working, grocery shopping, and mommying (including some 4th grade homework help). And now all I can do is sit and stew and wonder/worry about what's happening with all of these people I've grown so attached to until the next book gets written!

Suzanne Chazin's Land of Careful Shadows

I likely never would have picked this book up if Kensington hadn't offered the second book in the series, A Blossom Of Bright Light, to me via NetGalley. I hadn't heard of Suzanne Chazin and since it's far from being a middle grade, historical or cozy it's not something that I would have just stumbled upon in my searches for something to read. I think, sometimes, that someone at Kensington knows me more than maybe I know myself.

As said, this isn't cozy. Not only aren't their recipes or book clubs or quirky amateur sleuths ... it's just not cozy. Things are uncomfortable. Things are real. Well, fictional ... but more realistic than the cozies I've read so frequently for so many years.
Land of Careful Shadows takes place in Lake Holly, New York -- a fictional community north of New York City (only about 50 miles north -- maybe Westchester or Rockland County). When Jimmy Vega was growing up there he was the only Latino aside from his mother. Jimmy is now a detective for the county and has returned to Lake Holly after the body of an Hispanic woman is found dead at a nearby lake. In her purse was a photo of a small child and no one knows where the child is. Jimmy's ex-wife and teenage daughter still live there -- and his high school sweetheart and her husband are also back in the area with their young pre-teen daughter. Lake Holly become a haven for undocumented immigrants from Central America who live alongside documented (aka "legal") immigrants and affluent members of society (such as Jimmy's exes) -- often doing low-paying jobs for a day here and a day there. Some members of the community see the "illegals" as people who are just trying to make better lives for themselves and their families but some just want to see them all deported and sent back to wherever they came from.
Much of the story centers around this clash. Are the authorities not doing enough because the victim was there illegally and they (seemingly) don't care about bringing the killer to justice? Are they doing too much because she was there illegally and, therefore, didn't really matter? Jimmy gets pulled from all directions -- as a police officer, a Latino (albeit it a New York born once with Puerto Rican heritage), even as a father since his own daughter is dating an illegal immigrant.
This is not just Jimmy's story and this is not just a mystery/crime novel. My favorite parts centered around the La Casa community center and, especially, the character of Rodrigo. He had already been imprisoned and deported for being an illegal and yet still struggled to return in order to be able to some day return home to his family with enough financial stability to support them. Reading about what he and his friends and family had gone through broke my heart. I've known quite a lot of refugees and immigrants (both documented and undocumented), but none of them had every spoken to me of what they had gone through in order to get to wherever they were. 
I have the second book sitting on my NetGalley shelf waiting for me. I hope it's as good!