Darktown (Wheeler Publishing Large Print Hardcover) - Hardcover

Mullen, Thomas

4.01

8,596 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1410493776 ISBN 13: 9781410493774

Publisher: Wheeler Publishing Large Print, 2016

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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."

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Review:

A brilliant blending of crime, mystery, and American history. Terrific entertainment. (Stephen King)

Superb (Ken Follett)

Mullen blends the classic ingredients of det-fic noir with a well-researched and searing portrayal of pre-civil rights racial division. Magnificent and shocking (Sunday Times)

One incendiary image ignites the next in this highly combustible procedural, set in the city's rigidly segregated black neighborhoods during the pre-civil-rights era and written with a ferocious passion that'll knock the wind out of you. (New York Times)

Fascinating, grim and unsettling, this is a story of violent and ingrained racism, political corruption, conspiracy and almost unbearable psychological pressure (Guardian)

A terrific story that raises issues that have not vanished. (Marcel Berlins The Times)

From the very first page of Darktown, I was stunned, mesmerized, and instantly a huge fan of Tom Mullen. Beyond the history and the thrilling mystery, the book's soul lies in the burgeoning partnership (and dare I say friendship) at the center of the book. It's a reminder of the ties that cut across race in America. There is nothing I love more in a book than hope. (Attica Locke, author of Black Water Rising)

A complicated crime fiction that melds an intense plot with fully realized characters (Daily Mail)

A fine, unflinching example of the increasingly widespread use of crime fiction to explore social issues; its plot is gripping (AD Miller The Economist)

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, author of Cold Mountain)

Book Description:

Darktown is a relentlessly gripping, highly intelligent crime novel set in Atlanta in 1948, a city rife with corruption, racism and violence, perfect for readers of Attica Locke's Black Water Rising and James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential.

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