Title: The Blue Dilemma
Author: Maurice A. Butler
Publisher: XlibrisUS
ISBN: B08132277
Genre: Fiction / Crime
Pages: 308
Reviewed by: Jake Bishop

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Maurice Butler’s The Blue Dilemma is a sweeping saga of individuals inside and outside
the police establishment in Washington D. C. It’s a novel that explores both the mental
and physical pressures people endure living their lives constantly surrounded by the
threat of crime, violence, and potential danger. Even those who “learn to live with it” are
affected in ways they themselves don’t understand. However, author Butler does a
stellar job of creating scenarios which help readers comprehend just what his
characters are seeing, feeling, and enduring.

The author concentrates on four central players, all of whom become police officers.
Shanita is a young black woman from a tough neighborhood in D. C. who is both
beautiful and smart. Her trajectory from girl to woman to officer will take her through
many tragedies and victories before she’s landed where she feels she really belongs.
Big Lee is a giant of a man who experiences racism at an early age in spite of his
imposing size. He plays college football, becomes an Army veteran of Iraq, then a bus
driver before becoming an officer of the transit police. Stevie is a white boy from Kansas
who eventually winds up in the nation’s capital with a badge on his chest and a black
girl in his heart. Gregory is a veteran police officer who’s had to use his weapon to kill
on more than on one occasion. His experience with virtually everything a police officer
faces, plus his inherent morality and level-headedness, makes him the perfect advisor
for the younger officers he comes in contact with.

Butler takes each of these four characters and covers their unique histories in detail.
Then he seamlessly interweaves them into the duties they perform as members of the
police force working in one of the toughest urban neighborhoods in the country. In one
way or another, the officers are involved in everything from traffic accidents (some
devastatingly horrendous), to domestic disturbances (all fraught with potential danger),
to theft, robbery, drugs, prostitution, gangs, kidnapping, rape, murder, and more. The
author also pulls no punches when it comes to black on black crime, white on black
racism, dirty cops, institutions that too often “look the other way” and prejudice in all its
various forms.

By the time you’ve reached the end of the story, Butler has taken you on a roller coaster
ride of emotions. There are warm and romantic interludes, tense and suspenseful
situations, plus graphic descriptions of violent interplay both physically and emotionally.
Perhaps the best thing about Butler’s storytelling though, is that he never loses his
moral compass. You always know what he believes is right and wrong and you have a
hard time disagreeing with him. Readers will certainly understand when all is said and
done, why individuals who chose police work as a career, will always be faced with a
multitude of experiences that make up The Blue Dilemma.