Blood of My Brother by James LePore

“I waited too long, Dan. I’m sorry. If I was the one killed like that, you’d have started the next day. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I’m starting now.”
~Page 123

Title: Blood of My Brother
Author: James LePore
ISBN: 9780981956886
Publisher: The Story Planet/2010
Pages: 313

Blood of My brother is a suspense novel with good thriller elements. It grips the reader right from the start. It has that human element too, which any reader will relate. This novel takes us from Newark, New Jersey to Miami and Mexico. It takes us to places where corruption rules the roost and drug cartels are a way of life.  

Jay Cassio and Don Del Colliano have been friends since they were 5-year-olds. It formed under the shadow of racial riots of 1967 in Newark, New Jersey. From that day onwards, they became best of friends. Dan has always been there whenever Jay had needed him. And that too without asking. After Jay's parents die in a plane crash, it is Dan who sticks to him and gets him out of the tragedy. 

Jay becomes a successful lawyer and Dan, a private Investigator, not very known at that, yet their friendship deepens and they are more like brothers now. A woman, Kate Powers, Jay is representing, is found dead, with her head cut off, her husband Bryce Powers is suspected of murder, but he too is murdered. Initially it is thought of as a murder-suicide. Dan too is brutally murdered, with marks of torture inflicted on his body, Jay thinks it is a coincidence. He goes around asking questions about his friend's murder and finds that FBI is somehow involved and want him to not to pursue it.

But he can't let it go as his best friend is dead and he wants to know why. He remembers that Dan had mentioned a woman, for whom he had acted as a courier of large amount of money for a good commission. Jay is determined to find that woman, who also seems to related to the Powers' murders somehow. Everyone is looking for her. FBI, Jay, Mexican drug lords. She seems to have disappeared into thin air. 

Isabel Perez has nowhere to run, and she wants freedom desperately. She also wishes to kill the powerful men, who disrupted her life completely. For that she has to fight those powers, which no one has dared to fight. Her path gets crossed with Jay and together they know, they have to fight, in which they can either win or die. And both are fully prepared for that. Can Jay take revenge? Can Isabel escape from her past? From her cage? Can they have a future without their pasts? Blood of My brother covers these and gives us more.

Finally, it all about choices. Jay. Isabel. Dan. Not to forget the other characters. They meet, mix, amalgamate and leave the reader wanting more. And we must not forget the bigger issues of corruption, drugs, and using sex as a power. These rot the system. Any system.

For all those lovers of Crime Fiction...I say go for it....Blood of My Brother is well worth it. 

I thank the author for my copy. You can also check out my review of  

The World I Never Made by James LePore