A girl whose skin is black on the right side of her body, white on the left, becomes a magical figure in an apocalyptic future in this YA fantasy novel.

A full-on race war rages across a near-future America, pitting black and white Americans against one another: “There was no African American anymore, no Asian, no Native American, and no more Hispanic or Middle Eastern people. If you weren’t white, you were black.” The assassination of a far-right president by a militant black separatist leads to a police-state climate, resulting in murders, arrests, and mass incarcerations of black people in cities across the country. For Jetta, a sheltered 14-year-old girl in New Orleans, the horrors are particularly personal; she was inexplicably born half-white, half-black. When she was an infant, firefighters and paramedics barely rescued her from a deadly church-burning by neo-Nazis. Raised by her loving grandmother in a black household, she’s considered freakish by both militant factions; as a result, she customarily hides the white side of her face under a hoodie in public. The genocidal destruction of a New Orleans neighborhood makes Jetta a fugitive; Tyler, another resilient survivor whose brother is a fighter for a black nation-state, accompanies her. Jetta’s other traveling companions include the friendly ghosts of her grandmother and other slain friends, plus a cheerful, drum-playing drunk who, significantly, bears the name of an African storm god. In short, exciting chapters, prolific thriller writer Rose (Waltzing Matilda, 2018, etc.) spins an action-fantasy yarn with a hot-button premise that will strike some readers as urgently timely and others as being in questionable taste. As the story goes on, it moves away from gritty, gory descriptions of large-scale urban civil warfare and into magical-realism territory involving spirits and symbolic monsters, akin to those in Neil Gaiman’s 2001 fantasy novel, American Gods. Rose strives ambitiously to make a bigger metaphorical statement about the nature of human conflict, although it’s an unfocused one with an open-ended conclusion. Readers may find it easier to latch onto the story’s nightmarish left-versus-right mortal combat than its immortal deities wrestling with their destinies.

An incendiary tale featuring mythic and realistic elements.

Jack Ryder’s latest case involves a dismembered body, and a precursor to a string of deaths, in this first thriller of a series featuring the Florida detective.

Jack’s been at the Sheriff’s Department in Cocoa Beach for seven years, but only now has his first homicide assignment: Laura Bennett’s partially mutilated corpse that cops find in her bedroom. Her husband, Brandon, who claims he slept through the murder, is unsurprisingly the first suspect. But Laura’s estranged father was John Platt, the celebrity writer who bequeathed his millions to the daughter he didn’t know and possibly incited his three other children. So it can’t be a coincidence when Laura’s neighbor Rhonda Harris is discovered dead from an apparent suicide, her house filled with Platt’s novels. The subsequent death of a judge in a fire takes top priority, especially after a gasoline can at the scene points to arson. Jack, however, isn’t any closer to finding a killer, though there very well could be more than one. His personal life, as it turns out, is just as demanding. Helping his parents run their beachside motel, Jack meets and befriends Shannon King, famed country singer under an alias while she and her 6-year-old daughter, Angela, abscond from abusive husband, Joe. Rose (Edwina, 2016, etc.) bolsters her tale by thoroughly developing the protagonist. Jack, for one, is a single father raising spunky twins, Abigail and Austin, and moody teen Emily, daughter of former, killed-on-duty partner Lisa. The likewise riveting killer, whom readers know as The Snakecharmer, is frighteningly diligent, and whether or not he’s responsible for every murder remains a mystery for much of the story. Various subplots abound, including a flashback to the life of Annie, a college student who endured rape two decades ago. There are red herrings, though Rose sufficiently ties up all the storylines. Jack and Shannon’s (potential) romance, despite momentarily benching the detective’s ongoing investigations, is a welcome addition. But while the killer’s identity plus ultimate motivation are plausible enough to satiate and maybe even shock readers, the big reveal is something Jack probably should have noticed a lot sooner.

The charming protagonist surrounded by a winsome family should surely enhance future mysteries.