'Johnny Careless' review: 'Blue Bloods' showrunner Kevin Wade's riveting novel

We have the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023 to thank for an extraordinarily accomplished debut crime novel by "Blue Bloods" showrunner and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Kevin Wade. During that unexpected break in the 14-year run of Wade’s CBS police procedural drama, Wade, who lives on Long Island's North Shore, tried his hand at something different. “Johnny Careless” is the result, proving what his fans already knew: the man can really tell a story.

From the first sentences, it’s clear that the novel’s Long Island setting will be a vital part of the action: “That early on a Sunday morning the beaches in Bayville were owned by the shorebirds grazing at the tidal buffet. It seemed to Police Chief Jeep Mullane that they were angry at the intrusion as the officers on scene taped off the perimeter and the EMTs carefully slid the body out of the water. The gulls screeched like snooty old ladies clutching their pearls and an osprey eyed the bald pink scalp of one EMT like it was a slice of deli ham.”

It turns out the dead man, whose face is now just “red mulch” after whatever misadventure has befallen him, is the chief’s lifelong best friend, Johnny Chambliss. He was nicknamed Johnny Careless by some of the boy’s early coaches for his high-handed, “could care less” approach to life, even as a child. “He’s from a different tribe than you and me, different customs, different standards,” says one man, whose behavior at Johnny’s funeral shows he is still holding a grudge.

The class distinction is deeply embedded in Jeep’s friendship with Johnny, and indeed in the whole novel. Jeep is the son of an NYPD cop who died as a result of long-term health troubles incurred at Ground Zero. Jeep has never felt at ease in Johnny’s world, and even as he goes to deliver the news of their son’s death, it’s clear his awkwardness with Gwen and Pete Chambliss has deep roots.

“The hell did he do now?” yells Johnny’s dad when he sees the chief in his backyard.

The one person in Johnny’s country club crowd that Jeep is comfortable with is Niven, Johnny’s gorgeous ex-wife. She finds her way to Jeep’s place each of the first several nights after his death. But what exactly does she want from him? Jeep isn’t sure he wants to find out.

The novel alternates between chapters set in the present, during the investigation of the murder and of a series of high-end automobile thefts, and chapters that flash back to key moments in Jeep and Johnny’s past. Twenty years earlier, a scene set in the Adonis Diner on Jericho Turnpike introduces some of the carelessness Johnny is famous for, while showing us the social milieu of the friends’ salad days. “The crowd was Lawn Guyland diverse: pale male-rapper wannabes from Hicksville and Mineola; boisterous jocks from Chaminade and St. Anthony’s; packs of spray-tanned girlfriends from Roslyn and New Hyde Park helping their most molly-damaged sisters in and out of the ladies’ room, shrieking laughs.”

Another flashback chapter reveals a romance in Jeep’s past that ended in personal and professional disaster. He met Laila, a photographer’s model, on a domestic abuse call, and ended up in an ill-advised love affair, partly based on the fact that her Martha’s Vineyard childhood had so much in common with his own. “The tribal signage of club parking stickers and elite college decals was pretty much the same. Her father was a high school history teacher instead of a cop and her merge lane was sailing instead of lacrosse, but the clichés and the customs matched up pretty well.”

The suspense mounts as the threads in past and present begin to twist tightly together. Every step of the way, Jeep finds himself fighting an uphill battle against cronyism and corruption in Long Island government and law enforcement. One particular nemesis is Walter Donahue, the mayor of Central Brookville, a pretentious boob whom the chief discovers out in the wee hours with a gun, planning to take the law into his own hands. The dressing-down Jeep delivers includes some very choice words for the mayor’s “ridiculous windbreaker, like you’re riding up front on 'Blue Bloods.' ”

Speaking of which, since the 14th season of Wade’s show turned out to be its last, one can only hope that the further adventures of Chief Jeep Mullane lie in our future.