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Blood Line is the tenth Gabe Wager mystery from Rex Burns, with the half-Chicano half-Anglo Denver homicide detective working a multi-decade family-secrets case that opens with a present-day death and gradually reveals itself to involve decades of accumulated guilt and inheritance manipulation. The Wager series uses Burns's longtime Colorado residence and his careful attention to actual Denver geography to do something the regional procedural form rarely manages.
Burns's strength in Blood Line is the patient social-deduction work. The family relationships, the cultural pressures on Wager's investigation, the specific way Denver's class-and-ethnic boundaries shape what he can and cannot ask, are all rendered with the kind of attention only a longtime Denver writer would have. Fans of Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn and Chee novels or James Sallis's Lew Griffin series will recognize the careful regional procedural register operating at its peak.
The case resolves with appropriate institutional weight.
Three stars. Reliable late-series Wager. The Blood Line Rex Burns novel is best for readers familiar with the earlier books in the series. New readers should start with The Alvarez Journal or Angle of Attack for the cleanest introduction to the Wager voice.
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