Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black Water Rising | 2009 | Attica Locke | Buy |
| 2 | Lamentation | 2014 | Attica Locke | Buy |
| 3 | Pleasantville | 2015 | Attica Locke | Buy |
| 4 | December Boys | 2016 | Attica Locke | Buy |
| 5 | Give Up the Dead | 2017 | Attica Locke | Buy |
| 6 | Broken Ground | 2018 | Attica Locke | Buy |
| 7 | Rag and Bone | 2019 | Attica Locke | Buy |
The Jay Porter series by Attica Locke follows a Black personal injury lawyer working out of a Houston strip mall office. Jay’s clients are rarely wealthy, and his practice is always on the edge, but each book pulls him deeper into cases that expose the tangled relationships between race, money, and power in Texas.
In Black Water Rising, set in 1981, Jay rescues a woman from the Buffalo Bayou one night and finds himself entangled in a murder investigation that threatens his career and family. Pleasantville, set fifteen years later, sees Jay defending a man accused of kidnapping in a historically Black neighborhood on the north side of Houston while grappling with personal loss and the disintegration of his law practice. The series blends legal thriller mechanics with a sharp examination of the Black experience in Houston across decades of change.