In an era when media stories note that our racial schisms are widening, mystery fans can find a revealing echo in mystery/thriller tales. Certainly, the inclusion of racial divisions will let an author increase the difficulties of crime-solving by drawing violent motives from bias, undermining witness reliability, and warping the agents of law and justice. But for the best writers, racial conflicts are an opportunity for more than plotting clever clues and allow them to go beyond genre fiction to address the mysteries of human tribalism. Here are some notable recent novels, starting with 2018 Edgar Award winner Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke. Locke's protagonist Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, is called to a small East Texas town to solve two murders--a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman--that dangerously roil racial resentments and threaten Darren himself. In Celeste Ng's 2015 bestseller Everything I Never Told You, the stock elements of a missing girl in a lake, a local bad boy who was one of the last to see her, and a quiet all-American Ohio town are transformed into the complex portrait of a Chinese-American family destroyed and unable to bring themselves to tell one another, or the police, what they believe is behind the disappearance of a favored child, the focus of all the dreams they were unable to pursue. Prejudice against Native Americans is the backdrop for Red Knife by William Kent Krueger. In this entry in the award-winning Corcoran O'Connor series, private investigator Cork is caught up in a racial gang war in picturesque Tamarack County, MN, when the daughter of a powerful businessman dies from meth addiction and her father vows revenge on the Red Boyz, a gang of Ojibwe youths accused of supplying the fatal drug. When the head of the Red Boyz and his wife are murdered execution-style, Cork, a man of mixed heritage, must uncover the truth to prevent the outbreak of a "red vs. white" war. For more top fiction dealing with racism, racial conflict and discrimination, see the Goodreads recommendations at https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/21184.Best_Novels_on_Racism_and_Discrimination
