This John Jordan Prequel Needs Some "Oomph!"

Innocent Blood - Michael Lister

One line from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Welcome to the Monkey House” was running through my head as I read Michael Lister’s Innocent Blood: “The Foxy Grandpa shoehorned himself into the scene…” Never mind that protagonist John Jordan is but a stripling in his late teens instead of a grandpa, Lister still managed to shoehorn the boy into early-‘80s Atlanta, complete with a face-to-face meeting with serial killer Wayne Williams. Give us a break…

The title is the seventh in the John Jordan mystery series – some quick sleuthing reveals that it’s a prequel set well before the first in the series; intended to provide insight into Jordan's formative years. According to reviews of Lister’s other work (all of which have “blood” in the title), Jordan’s a “reluctant detective” type; a minister who keeps having to solve murders. I don’t know that for sure, and I don’t intend to find out… 

As a high-schooler, Jordan is torn between heading into police work or opting for the ministry. The police work part is an obsession with the deaths of the children in Atlanta attributed to Williams; the ministry is... well, it just shows up one day when he's hung over. Choosing the ministry, sort of, Jordan decamps his Florida hometown the day after graduation to attend a newly-minted seminary in Atlanta. There, in addition to his religious studies, he takes on an investigation of his own: the death of LaMarcus Williams (no relation to Wayne); certain that the child’s death cannot be attributed to the man already on death row. Along the way Jordan falls in love with the poor dead boy’s step-sister, Jordan (yes, there is a mention of “Jordan Jordan”). There ensue lots and lots of pining and plenty of meaningful glances, but the girl is not only considerably older than our hero, she’s also married. Oops – and young John a divinity student… As one might expect, Jordan solves his chosen mystery… or at least thinks he's solved it. But then there comes the critical twist and what had been solid detective work disintegrates under the mass of one of the genre’s most hackneyed plot twists.

Although moderately well written – there appear to be no problems with continuity, the grammar and spelling are at a professional level – Innocent Blood is at best a lackluster read. It’s told in the first person with pretty relentless linear plotting: “I did and then she did and then he did and then we did…” Lister wastes almost nothing on setting the scene or giving characters more than the barest back-stories necessary to move along the plot (hint: every bit of backstory will eventually be useful). One of the few deviations from linearity is a throwaway bit in which a young Jordan has an encouraging phone call from an “L.A. detective with the same name as an Early Netherlandish painter whose work I had encountered in an art appreciation class earlier in the year…” A second deviation is Jordan’s hospital visits to a young film director dying of what they used to call “gay flu.”

Even those two deviations come at some cost. For one, what high-school kid takes art appreciation? And for the second, the dying man is simply parachuted into the plot with only the barest of introductions. The kid also drinks a helluva lot for a divinity student, if you ask me… On the other hand, except for near-touchless yearning there's no "sex," minimal swearing and only implied violence without significant gore -- what one might expect for a religious professional turned amateur sleuth.

The hackneyed plot device and the thin construction conspired to reduce my rating of Innocent Blood to barely adequate; only Lister’s basic skills prevent it from sinking any further. In other words, 2½ stars…

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