Darktown : a novel

Format:

Book

Title:

Darktown : a novel

Author:

Mullen, Thomas author

ISBN:

9781501133862

9781501133879

Edition:

First 37 Ink/Atria book hardcover edition.

Publication:

New York : 37 Ink/Atria, [2017]

Physical Description:

371 pages ; 24 cm

Summary:

"Responding to orders from on high, the Atlanta Police Department is forced to hire its first black officers, including war veterans Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith. The newly minted policemen are met with deep hostility by their white peers: they aren't allowed to arrest white suspects, drive squad cars, or set foot in the police headquarters. When a black woman who was last seen in a car driven by a white man turns up dead, Boggs and Smith suspect white cops are behind it. Their investigation sets them up against a brutal cop, Dunlow, who has long run the neighborhood as his own, and his partner, Rakestraw, a young progressive who may or may not be willing to make allies across color lines"--Amazon.com.

Subject(s):

African American police -- Fiction.

Race relations -- Fiction.

Atlanta (Ga.) -- Fiction.

Southern States -- Race relations -- Fiction.

Southern States -- Social conditions -- 20th century -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Atlanta (Ga.) -- Fiction.

Southern States -- Race relations -- Fiction.

Southern States -- Social conditions -- 20th century -- Fiction.

Georgia -- Atlanta

Genre:

Detective and mystery stories.

Detective and mystery fiction

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Stayton Public Library	M MULLEN Thomas	Searching... Unknown
Searching... McMinnville Public Library	Mullen, T.	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Monmouth Public Library	Fic (m) Mullen, T. 2016	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Newberg Public Library	MYSTERY MULLEN	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Salem Main Library	MYSTERY Mullen, T.	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Sheridan Public Library	Mullen	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Silver Falls Library	FIC MULLEN	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

"One incendiary image ignites the next in this highly combustible procedural...written with a ferocious passion that'll knock the wind out of you." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Fine Southern storytelling meets hard-boiled crime in a tale that connects an overlooked chapter of history to our own continuing struggles with race today." --Charles Frazier, bestselling author of Cold Mountain

"This page-turner reads like the best of James Ellroy." -- Publishers Weekly , starred review

"In the way the story is told coupled with its heightened racial context, Darktown reminded me of Walter Mosley or a George Pelecanos novel." -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"High-quality...crime fiction with a nimble sense of history...quick on its feet and vividly drawn." -- Dallas Morning News

"Some books educate, some books entertain, Thomas Mullen's Darktown is the rare book that does both." -- Huffington Post

The award-winning author of The Last Town on Earth delivers a riveting and elegant police procedural set in 1948 Atlanta, exploring a murder, corrupt police, and strained race relations that feels ripped from today's headlines.

Responding to orders from on high, the Atlanta Police Department is forced to hire its first black officers, including war veterans Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith. The newly minted policemen are met with deep hostility by their white peers; they aren't allowed to arrest white suspects, drive squad cars, or set foot in the police headquarters.

When a black woman who was last seen in a car driven by a white man turns up dead, Boggs and Smith suspect white cops are behind it. Their investigation sets them up against a brutal cop, Dunlow, who has long run the neighborhood as his own, and his partner, Rakestraw, a young progressive who may or may not be willing to make allies across color lines. Among shady moonshiners, duplicitous madams, crooked lawmen, and the constant restrictions of Jim Crow, Boggs and Smith will risk their new jobs, and their lives, while navigating a dangerous world--a world on the cusp of great change.

Set in the postwar, pre-civil rights South, and evoking the socially resonant and morally complex crime novels of Dennis Lehane and Walter Mosley, Darktown is a vivid, smart, intricately plotted crime saga that explores the timely issues of race, law enforcement, and the uneven scales of justice.

Author Notes

Thomas Mullen is an American author, born in 1974 in Providence, Rhode Island. He is a graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio. He writes stories and essays which have been published in Grantland, Paste, The Huffington Post, and Atlanta Magazine. His novels include The Last Town on Earth, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, and The Revisionists. He writes the Darktown series, which includes the novels Darktown, and Lightning Men. He won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction with his book, The Last Town on Earth, which was also named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA Today.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Mullen (The Revisionists) uses the lens of a twisted murder mystery to unsettle readers with his unflinching look at racism in post-WWII Atlanta. That city has just hired its first black police officers, but the eight men given the responsibility for guarding black neighborhoods are still relegated to second-class status. For example, they're barred from wearing their police uniforms when traveling to and from court to testify. One of those officers, Lucius Boggs, ends up being responsible for a sensitive murder investigation after Brian Underhill, a drunken white man, drives his car into a lamppost in a black neighborhood. Underhill was released without charge by the white officers who showed up at the scene, but Lily Ellsworth, the black woman who was his passenger, is found dead later on, abandoned in an alley like a piece of trash. Underhill's status as a former cop and the low value placed on black lives make the probe into Lily's death a perilous one, for both Boggs and a white officer who's uneasy with his department's violent racism. This page-turner reads like the best of James Ellroy. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* To be one of the first black policemen in 1948 Atlanta was to endure constant reminders of second-class status. Black officers (called the Negro Police at the time), weren't allowed to ride in squad cars, walk in the front door of police headquarters, or arrest white people. Mullen shows us these official rules; he also depicts the shameful way white officers routinely treated black officers in a host of wrenching details. This police procedural not only illuminates just how black officers were treated but also uses historical detail to set the racist stage (like the fact that black neighborhoods were, as a matter of policy, consistently without streetlights or routine garbage pickup). The story centers on two new black officers, Boggs and Smith, who come across an older white man whose Buick has crashed into one of the first streetlights on the wrong side of town. The young black woman with him flees the scene and is later discovered beaten to death and dumped in an alley. While the premise of many mysteries involves police investigating in the wake of official silence, Mullen employs this familiar theme specifically to shine a light on the embedded racism of the times. Boggs and Smith persist in trying to uncover the woman's murderer, pushing against the rules and confronting dangers posed by resentful white cops. Mullen's writing is extremely evocative in bringing the pre-civil rights South to life.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2016 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Mullen's latest (following The Revisionists) travels back to pre-civil rights Atlanta in 1948, when the police department is forced to integrate despite violent resistance. The first black cops are not permitted to drive a squad car or make arrests, face overt contempt from their white colleagues, and limit their territory to the area known derisively as Darktown. On patrol one summer night, new officers Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith discover a young black girl fatally shot and discarded like garbage. They had previously seen her in the car of a white man who assaulted her, but Lionel Dunlow, the ranking white officer who responded to their call, released him. Risking their precarious careers, Boggs and Smith try to find justice despite lacking any investigative power. The case soon expands to implicate fellow officers and even a congressman, but the duo may have a tentative ally in rookie white policeman Dennis Rakestraw, who despises his partner Dunlow's brutal racism but has yet to stand up to it. VERDICT As his previous historical novels have proven, Mullen is skilled at bringing the past to life, both socially and visually (a TV adaptation produced by actor Jamie Foxx is already planned). Some readers may brace against the routine use of epithets, but fans of well-written literary thrillers will want this expert example. [See Prepub Alert, 3/14/16.]-Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.