Johnny Careless

Blue Bloods showrunner Wade makes a splashy debut with this stirring procedural about a veteran cop’s probe into the death of his former best friend. After a traumatizing case, Jeep Mullane leaves the NYPD to become the chief of a new police department in the wealthy part of Long Island where he grew up. While Jeep investigates a rash of car thefts, his colleagues discover a faceless male corpse on a beach in the small town of Bayville. The dead man bears a tattoo that identifies him as Johnny Chambliss, Jeep’s best friend from high school. Horrified, Jeep begins poking around Johnny’s affluent family for answers and stumbles onto a frightening web of corruption. Wade smoothly toggles between Jeep’s present-day investigation and his friendship with Johnny, shedding light on their class differences and the events that led them to lose touch in adulthood. Wade’s gift for suspense is as well honed as one would expect from his film and TV credits—the real surprise is his character work, which goes deep enough that readers will find themselves thinking about Jeep and Johnny long after they’ve turned the final page. Haunting and heartbreaking, this is a winner. Agent: Esther Newberg, CAA. (Jan.)