“I waited too long, Dan. I’m sorry. If I was the one killed like that, you’d have started the next day. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I’m starting now.” – Jay Cassio
What Jay Casio is starting in James LePore’s Blood of My Brother is an investigation into to the murder of his best friend since childhood, Dan Del Colliano. And start with a vengeance he does.
Jay’s and Dan’s friendship was forged under fire during the turbulent race riots of 1967 in Newark, New Jersey when, barely school age, they were caught up in the violence that erupted in their formerly peaceful neighborhood.
As they grew so did their bond, strengthening ever deeper as they weathered through tragedies such as the death of Jay’s parents in a plane crash. By the time they are adults, Jay a successful attorney and Dan a not so successful private investigator, the two have come to think of each other as brothers, through their common bond if not blood.
When a woman Jay is representing in a divorce is killed, beheaded, her high-powered soon to be ex-husband is the number one suspect… until he too is found dead. The discovery of Dan’s brutally tortured and murdered body in Miami a short time later initially seems like a case of coincidental bad timing. But when the FBI shows up and indicates Jay should stop asking questions it becomes clear to him that something more sinister is going on, something he’s determined to get to the bottom of. (more…)
Tomorrow I’ll be reviewing James LePore’s most recent novel, Blood of My Brother. Today, however, I am pleased to welcome James for a guest post and a peek behind the curtain at his writing process.
