Johnny Careless

November 1, 2024

Edgar-nominated screenwriter Wade (Blue Bloods) debuts with a procedural about Police Chief Jeep Mullane, who is running a small precinct on Long Island's North Shore after earning his detective shield in the NYPD. When the body of his childhood friend washes up, Jeep is caught in a game of privilege and power and a web of lies. With a 100K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

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November 15, 2024
The premature death of his oldest friend sends a rookie Nassau County, Long Island, police chief down Memory Lane. It's one bumpy trip. When the body of John Payson Chambliss, the scion of wealthy blue-blood Pete Chambliss, washes up on the Bayville beach, everyone assumes he was accidentally struck by a boat--everyone but Chief Jeep Mullane, Johnny's high-school lacrosse teammate, who's struck by the unexplained scratches on Johnny's back. As Jeep peels back the layers of mystery surrounding Johnny's death, screenwriter Wade, best known for the TV seriesBlue Bloods, interleaves his account of Johnny's funeral, Jeep's awkward reunion with Johnny's ex-wife, and his pursuit of a well-organized gang's recent spate of big-ticket car thefts in the area with a measured series of flashbacks to key incidents spaced a year apart and marching toward the present. Jeep takes the rap for Johnny hitting a deer with the family car. Johnny gets it on with visitor Catalina Soto, and sends her money to raise the son she bears back in Santiago until Pete ends the payments by threatening to cut off Johnny's trust fund. Jeep, attempting to live up to the model of his father, an NYPD officer whose tireless work at Ground Zero led to his early death, struggles to balance loyalty to his friends, his team, and the law. He takes up with a model who wants to stop her artist lover from adding nude photos of her to his professional portfolio without a release, a fling that ends very badly indeed. A colleague repaying a questionable favor sets Jeep on a promising trail to Johnny's possible killer. A haunting debut novel that works through misunderstandings and violence to something that feels like redemption.

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Starred review from October 14, 2024
Blue Bloods showrunner Wade makes a splashy debut with this stirring procedural about a veteran cop’s probe into the death of his former best friend. After a traumatizing case, Jeep Mullane leaves the NYPD to become the chief of a new police department in the wealthy part of Long Island where he grew up. While Jeep investigates a rash of car thefts, his colleagues discover a faceless male corpse on a beach in the small town of Bayville. The dead man bears a tattoo that identifies him as Johnny Chambliss, Jeep’s best friend from high school. Horrified, Jeep begins poking around Johnny’s affluent family for answers and stumbles onto a frightening web of corruption. Wade smoothly toggles between Jeep’s present-day investigation and his friendship with Johnny, shedding light on their class differences and the events that led them to lose touch in adulthood. Wade’s gift for suspense is as well honed as one would expect from his film and TV credits—the real surprise is his character work, which goes deep enough that readers will find themselves thinking about Jeep and Johnny long after they’ve turned the final page. Haunting and heartbreaking, this is a winner. Agent: Esther Newberg, CAA.