BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE: ROBERT BAILEY

Following the success of his debut legal thriller, Bailey offers yet another stunning story in the series namely Between Black and White. It is the sequel in the McMurtrie and Drake legal thriller series. Bailey has been a civil defence trial lawyer for 16 years in his hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, where he lives with his wife and children. In his novel, Bailey has established that he is an author to be read and remembered for. The story of Between Black and White is tied closely to Bailey’s and involves several same characters. In his previous novel, readers were introduced to Tom McMurtrie, the old and former law professor who returned to the courtroom after being forced to leave his teaching position at The Alabama School of Law. Tom teamed up with Rick Drake, who is a young attorney and one of his students. Tom and Rick together pursued a dangerous wrongful death lawsuit.

Between Black and White is Bo’s or Bocephus Haynes’ story. We’ve met Bo as a five-year-old who sees the members of the Ku Klux Klan lynching his father. From the opening pages where we find a disheartened, angry Bo all drunk on his father’s brutal lynching anniversary to the violent, shocking conclusion, Bo has taken a leap off the pages with boldness. He is flawed, and his failures land him in a courtroom as the only defendant in the murder case.

Bocephus Haynes in 1966 watched the harrowing lynching of his father brutally murdered by ten local members of the Ku Klux Klan. Bo spent his life pursuing justice in name of his father as a lawyer practising in the birthplace of Klan years later. But when Andy Walton, the man believed to have led the lynch mob, ended up getting murdered in the same spot as Bo’s father, Bo became the prime suspect.

Tom McMurtrie, the retired law professor who was Bo’s teacher and friend was removed from returning to the courtroom. McMurtrie and Rick Drake, defended Bo on capital murder charges while searching for Walton’s true killer. McMurtrie and Drake release Bo from a lifetime of despair and the justice remains hidden somewhere between black and white in a clash in the courtroom that puts their lives and reputations at stake.

On the 45th anniversary of his father’s lynching, Bo gets drunks in a local bar. Walton and his beautiful wife and the local landed aristocracy, accidentally run into Bo in a bar. Bo threatens Walton in front of the witnesses by quoting “eye for an eye.” Walton steps outside after the bartender breaks up the confrontation, but before Bo leaves from the bar, Maggie returns and tells him about Walton’s death. That night, someone shoots Walton and stages a fake lynching at the site where Bo’s father was lynched 45 years ago. 

All the Physical evidence points at Bo and everyone in the legal community know his motive and opportunity. Bo is in jail even before Bo recovers from his hangover. The prosecutor, a fierce woman attorney decides to seek the death penalty. 

Bo shapes his professional life around the goal as he was obsessed with punishing the man who lynched his father. He wanted to pursue the man responsible for his father’s death. Too many people in the city of Pulaski knew that Bo was driven by his fixation to punish the man who murdered his father. 

Bailey has set up the formula of a legal thriller. As used here, the formula refers to the structure and elements that define a genre or a literary style. Having said that, to say much more about the surprising, original twists of Between Black and White risks spoiling the plot. An unexpected witness with a startling revelation pops up at the end of the trial. But just when the reader settles back to relax and has believed that justice has been achieved, something violently complicated and utterly surprising happens.

It isn’t just that Bailey knows how to surprise us, but he also writes well. His characters are well-drawn, the sense of place and world-building is excellent which makes it worth a read and your time. The plot is intricate and believable. There is some redemption for a few characters, resolution for others, and those that deserve neither are left on their own. Justice is achieved but in a confused and violent way. Bailey has wrestled through the story to make something wholly fresh, engaging, and ultimately rich and satisfying what in less could have been a formulaic story.