Johnny Careless A novel

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.)

DEBUT Blue Bloods showrunner Wade showcases his talents on the page with this compelling police procedural. Jeep Mullane, ex-NYPD, returns to his Long Island hometown as the new police chief and quickly gets embroiled in local politics and personal obligations at the scene of the seemingly accidental death of his old friend "Careless" Johnny Chambliss. While Mullane grew up blue-collar, the son of a 9/11 NYPD hero, Johnny's privileged existence as a member of the elite Chambliss family created both beneficence and chaos. That history, along with deep scratch marks found on Johnny's back, raises questions of foul play. Mullane juggles commitment to Johnny's family, complicated feelings for Johnny's ex-wife, Niven, and pressure from local mayors to stop a car theft ring, while seeking the truth about Johnny's death. The resolution of the storylines feels too convenient, and this short book would benefit from a few more pages giving definition to some of the secondary characters, but the central characters are rich and the plot propulsive. VERDICT Blue Bloods fans will delight as Wade delivers a complicated police drama of the Don Winslow variety, written in the neo-noir style of Robert B. Parker's Spenser books.--Jon Jeffryes

The premature death of his oldest friend sends a rookie Nassau County, Long Island, police chief down Memory Lane. It's one bumpy trip. When the body of John Payson Chambliss, the scion of wealthy blue-blood Pete Chambliss, washes up on the Bayville beach, everyone assumes he was accidentally struck by a boat--everyone but Chief Jeep Mullane, Johnny's high-school lacrosse teammate, who's struck by the unexplained scratches on Johnny's back. As Jeep peels back the layers of mystery surrounding Johnny's death, screenwriter Wade, best known for the TV seriesBlue Bloods, interleaves his account of Johnny's funeral, Jeep's awkward reunion with Johnny's ex-wife, and his pursuit of a well-organized gang's recent spate of big-ticket car thefts in the area with a measured series of flashbacks to key incidents spaced a year apart and marching toward the present. Jeep takes the rap for Johnny hitting a deer with the family car. Johnny gets it on with visitor Catalina Soto, and sends her money to raise the son she bears back in Santiago until Pete ends the payments by threatening to cut off Johnny's trust fund. Jeep, attempting to live up to the model of his father, an NYPD officer whose tireless work at Ground Zero led to his early death, struggles to balance loyalty to his friends, his team, and the law. He takes up with a model who wants to stop her artist lover from adding nude photos of her to his professional portfolio without a release, a fling that ends very badly indeed. A colleague repaying a questionable favor sets Jeep on a promising trail to Johnny's possible killer. A haunting debut novel that works through misunderstandings and violence to something that feels like redemption. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.