Blood on Their Hands is a gritty dive into the recent past, featuring a hardworking and irresistibly likable immigrant named Alec, who finds himself in an unenviable situation. Alec is pulled over by law enforcement, ostensibly for a burned out “rite tail lite.” The two repugnant and evidently uneducated cops proceed to violently assault Alec for his political views and his skin color rather than his minor traffic infraction. A lawyer and a reporter, Garbuncle and Hiram, just happen to parked nearby and witness the whole egregious affair. Alec needs a lawyer, Garbuncle needs redemption, and Hiram needs to see this story through to the end. The plot centers around Alec’s defense, and the difficulties this mismatched team encounters dealing with deep-seated racism and abuse of power in the South.
As this intriguing courtroom thriller unfolds, Bob Brink demonstrates a controlled hand as he meters out the drama. The legal aspects, including the frustrating inadequacies in an imperfect legal system and all the crafty ways to manipulate the results, come across as completely believable. The characters, however, not so much. From the ignorant and buffoonish language and movements of the cops to the overly cartoonish speech of the foreign characters, most of them feel like highly exaggerated versions of real people. Important and relevant topics such as racism are featured so despicably and so prevalently throughout the book that it can be difficult to read at times. Thankfully, there are a few spots of levity, particularly relating to the attorney’s unflinchingly tightfisted nature. It cannot be easy writing on such a meaningful and sensitive topic, so hats off to Bob Brink for constructing such a timely and brutally honest piece of fiction.
