Guide Me Home

Edgar winner Locke concludes her Highway 59 trilogy (after Heaven, My Home) with an uneven look at Black Texas Ranger Darren Matthews’s efforts to track down a missing sorority girl. Darren’s estranged mother, Bell, has been causing more than her typical amount of trouble: after learning that Darren tampered with the inquiry into the murder of Aryan Brotherhood member Ronnie Malvo to protect the likely culprit—an elderly Black man—she blackmailed him, forcing Darren to coerce a confession from one of Malvo’s colleagues. Now, the DA has come knocking at Darren’s door, attempting to indict him for obstructing justice. Meanwhile, Bell shows up to Darren’s home with a lead on a new case: Black college student Sera Fuller has disappeared from the school where Bell works, shortly after filing a police report for unspecified bullying. At first, Darren can’t decide whether to trust his mother’s lead, but after learning more about Fuller’s family history, he decides to investigate, pushing through skepticism from his colleagues. Locke’s prose remains elegant, but a surplus of backstory threatens to swallow the narrative, and she ties one too many tidy bows on Darren’s personal troubles—particularly his tumultuous marriage—for the conclusion to land with the desired sense of realism. This is a disappointment. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment. (Sept.)