"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
Award-winning author Thomas Mullen is a "wonderful architect of
intersecting plotlines and unexpected answers"(The Washington Post) in
this timely and provocative mystery and brilliant exploration of race,
law enforcement, and justice in 1940s Atlanta.
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 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.
A vivid, smart, intricately plotted crime saga that explores the timely
issues of race, law enforcement, and the uneven scales of justice.
