A Blossom of Bright Light (A Jimmy Vega Mystery)

There were many families like the Serrano's. They lived in an immigrant community. The mother had died but the father was a hard working man, attempting to do his best for his three children. A police raid, looking for drugs, mistakenly came to their home instead of the next block. They found no drugs but found that Mr. Serrano was undocumented. He was taken for a hearing on being sent back to Mexico. The children, fourteen-year-old Luna and her younger siblings were placed in the care of a wealthy Spanish family.

In an upscale community of Lake Holly, New York, Det. Jimmy Vega is assigned to investigate the situation of a newly born infant left to the elements to die. Later, the body of a young woman is found.

Det Vega needs the help of his girlfriend Adele, founder of La Casa Community Center. Many of the residents are undocumented and don't trust the police.

The story is told with passion and good imagery. "Luna tried to help Dulce with her (bag) but she was carrying too many things. The terra-cotta flowerpot slipped from Luna's hands and cracked in two on the bare floor. Dirt scattered everywhere. Mami's beautiful plant lay sideways on the clay shards.

I thought the image of broken plant and a broken family was well portrayed.

As the story continues, the fear immigrant community to come forth to the police is heart brokenly described.

Recommended!

A BLOSSOM OF BRIGHT LIGHT is a readable police procedural, but more "literary" than "mystery". The focus is on romantic relationships (Jimmy and Adele), and on the plight of vulnerable, undocumented Hispanic workers who risk unjust, family-destroying deportation (Manuel and his children) or sexual abuse by exploitive employers (a live-in nanny and several others).

In this second Jimmy Vega mystery (the first is [[ASIN:149670228X Land of Careful Shadows]]), a newborn baby dies because Jimmy persuaded Adele to ignore a call from La Casa, her community help center, and to spend the night with him as they'd planned. Neither Adele nor Jimmy are blameworthy--the call only reported that Zambo, a local crazy, had experienced another vision of the Virgin Mary in the woods behind La Casa--but Jimmy is obsessed with solving the mystery of the baby's identity. The mystery deepens when the body of a teenager, who had just given birth, is discovered buried in the woods. No one recognizes the girl, who had carried her baby to full term.

Jimmy is taken off the case when his daughter Joy becomes the prime suspect in the two deaths. Of course, he investigates anyway, risking his job and his working relationships with his partner and other cops. Jimmy is distracted a little by concerns that Adele will accept a political candidate's offer of an important job in Washington, D.C., and leave Lake Holly altogether. In the end, Jimmy wraps up the case in an action-packed finish that is interesting despite being rather unbelievable and contrived.

The writing in this book is excellent, and its portrayal of the plight of undocumented immigrants rings true, especially the portions about deportation procedures. Although most of the larger plot developments are predictable and easily guessed, there are many detailed plot twists that suffice to keep the reader reading. However, because so much of the story is about relationships and the sadness surrounding the unnecessary death of a newborn baby, I rate A BLOSSOM OF BRIGHT LIGHT at 4 stars ("I like it" on the official Amazon scale).

Jimmy Vega is of Puerto Rican heritage and born and raised in the Bronx. As a homicide detective in the NYPD, he hasn't travelled far geographically, but he's had to learn to juggle different cultures as well as stereotypes to advance in the police force. His personal life isn't any less complicated - divorced with his ex-wife and daughter living in a wealthy NYC suburb with the new husband, Jimmy feels isolated. His girlfriend Adele is a Harvard educated lawyer who is juggling raising her son after a difficult divorce.

In A Blossom of Bright Light, homicide detective Jimmy Vega's girlfriend Adele receives an emergency call that Zambo, an unreliable drunk has had a vision. With some sulking and emotional blackmail, Jimmy dissuades Adele from returning to work. When an abandoned newborn baby is found dead near Adele's nonprofit, Jimmy and Adele are convinced that they could have saved a life if Adele had returned to work. Jimmy is driven to find the baby's mother but when his daughter Joy is drawn into the investigation, he's removed from the team. Jimmy doesn't stop investigating but puts his job in jeopardy as he takes progressively greater risks.

A Blossom of Bright Light was the first Jimmy Vega novel that I'd read and it was fascinating to have the crime and its investigation unfold along with the stories of different characters within the Hispanic/Latino experience. Chazin weaves into the narrative the stories of a wide range of people from an undocumented cook who is forced to leave his children after a wrongful arrest uncovers a twenty-year-old arrest warrant to the rising star of a Harvard educated lawyer who chose to leave Big Law life to run a nonprofit that focuses on assisting undocumented workers to homicide detective Jimmy Vega.

Jimmy Vega is a New York homicide cop who just wants to spend a night with his girlfriend Adele. When she gets a call from the Latino community center she runs about the local nut claiming to have seen Mary and the baby Jesus, he convinces her it's nothing and that her time would be better spent with him. In the morning, they find out it wasn't nothing and there is a dead baby on Jimmy's conscience. From there, a series of seemingly unrelated events keep each of them busy until they realize what they're dealing with.

This book keeps you on the edge of your seat while dealing with important issues facing our country. I enjoyed the plot, the pacing, and the author's style of writing.

Solid, well written police/detective novel with plenty of action, an interesting plot, plenty of plot twists and an interesting cast
of characters.

Recommended

A great mystery - really well-written in a comfortable style, characters whom you'll feel you know, and a plot that keeps you guessing. In the beginning, I wondered why an affluent lake community in upstate NY was chosen for a Latino community. Having grown up on the border with Mexico, I grew up thinking that Latinos, given a choice, would migrate toward the warmer climes - but, that may have been "back in the day". And the setting allowed our Detective Jimmy Vega to live in a cozy cottage on the shores of the lake. Detective Vega was at a happy/unhappy stage of life - at odds with his higher-ups, trying to get along with his re-married ex-wife, getting his relationship with his daughter back on solid ground - and wondering if his soulmate girl friend, Adele, was about to leave for a cushy job in DC.

A baby found abandoned in the woods behind his girl friend's Latino Center gets the pot stirring. Everyone is a suspect, including Jimmy Vega's daughter, as the case unfolds - and, here we're treated to interesting stuff on what can happen to donated clothing - and to you, if your donated clothing (still carrying your scent since you didn't wash it) ends up being worn by a corpse!

We're also given some insight on the predicament of a widowed, illegal immigrant father, trying to raise three minor children, with no government support - who is discovered and placed on the deportation list. The political rigamarole he goes through makes you want to grab someone and shake them - as the children will go either to foster homes or reside in the clutches of a family up to no good,

Thus, the page turning begins. Will Jimmy's daughter be found innocent, will Papi be deported, will Adele move to DC, will the bad family (with great community credentials) be found out in time, will Jimmy gain the trust and admiration of his department again? It's a rush to the end of the novel to get the answers!

I thoroughly enjoyed what I would call a "literary" mystery - no "I just want the facts, Ma'am" here. It is not often that one can be "transported" in a mystery, but I enjoyed my time in Lake Holly. And it will be a much nicer place to live now that Jimmy Vega has his eyes on the populace!

More than a beach read - but you'd enjoy it on a beach, too!

A Blossom of Bright Light is a solid, well written detective novel. The author does an amazing job portraying the reality of the immigration situation that is so close to home. She is precise and keeps it real, written with passion you feel heavy hearted for the family involved. Chazin gives the reader a different way to view the Hispanic immigrant culture, bringing you closer to understanding the challenges and how they are in the mercy of others in high positions. It's an eye opener.

This was a fantastic read, great cast of characters and a few plot twists that kept it moving quickly. A book very hard to put down.

I would highly recommend.

This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. Lee Child called Suzanne Chazin 'a tremendous talent'. I strongly agree. She touches on the very sensitive problem of illegal immigration and deportation. Though her locale is Lake Holly, New York, it could be most anywhere there is Hispanic immigrant culture.
It was a difficult book to put down as at the very end of a chapter there would be a carrot so that you will start the next chapter and keep reading. Every time I take a car through a car wash I'll think of this ending with spinning brushes, the gears, the jet stream of water when Detective Vega faced them as he saved the girl who was bound and gagged in the car wash.
I received the book in a Giveaway and i am thankful for that as it introduced me to this fine author. I will look for her first in the series, "Land of Careful Shadows" and wait for the one I hope she writes next year.

This is the second book I have read by Suzanne Chazin and the second in a series with Jimmy Vega, a Latino police detective, set in an upscale community, Lake Holly, NY. I read the book in two days, really couldn't put it down, as much for the characters as for the mystery.
Suzanne Chazin does a great job of developing the characters and paints a realistic picture of the Hispanic immigrant community.

The mystery starts with the body of a new-born infant found near a gathering place for immigrants. Vega's activist girlfriend helps him gain the trust of the immigrant community but a twist in the story implicates Jimmy's daughter Joy. The plot takes a few surprising turns before being solved but I was as caught up by the characters, especially Jimmy and his girlfriend Adele, as I was by the mystery. I look forward to Ms Chazin's next book.

What a book! It kept me reading until 3 am last night.

I don't want to reveal to much of the very well and life-like crafted story. I just can tell, that when you guess who is involved in the crime things get even worse. The suspense is climbing up to an incredible level when Vega and Adele try so save the possible next victim.

Susanne Chazin doesn't only tell a gripping crime mystery, she shows us the difficulties we face in relationships, the hardships of being an undocumented immigrant, life within the hispanic communities, the manipulation and favoritism in politics, the effects of guilt.

The characters are multidimensional and it's easy to connect with them.

I recommend this book to readers who want gripping suspense with social-political-psychological background and believable characters.

I will look now for the first book of the series.

I want to thank NetGalley and Kensington books for the provided ARC.