Darktown Hardcover – 13 Sept. 2016

Darktown is set in a unique era & centred around the first black police officers in Atlanta in 1948. The plot has a huge promise of an enjoyable, yet educational read and it doesn't disappoint.All the characters have exceptional depth and realistic and believable and I felt a huge urge of hope for the 2 central police officers smith & Boggs. Coming fro different walks of life themselves, the relationship is often unpredictable but they compliment each others personality's very well.Throughout the case they have their backs against the wall, facing prejudice at every turn, but they finally emerge to form 2 links within the police that allows them to investigate further.The story feels slower than modern crime writing but I think that is due to the writer embellishing the era, setting, racism and characters so it actually works incredibly well in this novel.I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope that it continues as a series. The author has an exceptional talent, much similar to the 'legend of this genre' Walter Mosley!

1948 Atlanta sweats in a Deep South summer. New uniforms stick tight to eight black officers newly appointed to the PD. Strictly limited in their roles and responsibilities, distrusted by their community and hated by their white colleagues, Tommy Smith and Lucius Boggs wonder if they have made any kind of career choice here. Then they stumble on the body of a young black girl. Mullen offers a murder mystery and a police procedural in a violent, and corrupt racist city. It works well as both crime and historical fiction.The author uses two buddy pairings to explore the city and solve the case. The black rookies, on foot, cross paths with white cops in a squad car, Rake, a new recruit, and Dunlow, an old hand. There is no wise-cracking detective in Darktown – the forensics are tackled by ordinary beat officers putting in extra hours unpaid to find the killer. This maybe is a bit of a stretch.Mullen does not hold back on the viciousness of the Deep South at this time. He describes the stirrings of resistance that was to rise up powerfully in the next decades – King Senior is mentioned frequently. He also shows how the war caused some white people to believe that black lives matter too.The main characters are more than just stereotypes, they generally feel like flesh and blood. The plot is well-paced, the mystery quite credibly rooted in the twisted heart of this society. Mullen gets the balance right between action, dialogue and description. I liked this.

‘Darktown’ by Thomas Mullen is a gripping book. A combination of the social history of black Americans in post-war pre-civil rights USA, and crime story, it tells the story of the first black policemen in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1948 and the physical, emotional and moral challenges they faced. Page after page, and they turned quickly, I was astonished by what happened and the knowledge that similar events really took place. It is a commentary on racial divides in the USA that the summer (2016) this novel about white police brutality was published, white policemen are still shooting and mistreating black citizens.Politics aside, I read so quickly because the story of Officer Lucius Boggs and the case of the murdered Jane Doe grabbed me and made me resent the moments I wasn’t with them on the page. Twined together are the stories of Boggs and Police Officer Denny Rakestraw; one black cop, one white cop, both dissatisfied with the rules they must police and with the way black people, cops and citizens, are denigrated, both disturbed that the dead Jane Doe has been ignored. Boggs and Rake investigate alone and off-duty, risking suspension plus hatred and injury at the hands of fellow policemen. When they find themselves looking for the same witnesses, they find it difficult to trust. This is a time of corrupt cops and officials, when black people do not expect to have their rights upheld and Mullen shows the suspicion and mistrust of black citizens for the new police officers.‘Darktown’ is a both a depressing story and one which offers a hint of hope. A hint, mind. It is a book which stays with you. It is being filmed for television starring Jamie Foxx.One of the best books I’ve read this year.[Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC]

The Black Lives Matter movement is a timely reminder of the racial discrimination faced by black people on an almost daily basis. This book explores the racial attitudes and behaviours of white people in post-war America.I have to say, I often found the language and brutality directed against black population both sickening and appalling - although I appreciate it is a story ‘of its rime’, I suspect this is probably vastly understated.The story centres around the introduction of the first eight black police officers into a district of Alabama and the furore that action causes amongst the white police officers and the general population.Within this setting, a young black girl is brutally murdered and her body discarded in piles of decaying rubbish in a side alley. No official investigation of her murder is forthcoming and finally bringing her killer(s) to justice relies on an uneasy alliance being formed between a black and a white police officer.An interesting and important book that makes you examine your own attitudes to race and question whether institutional racism is still widespread within the Police Forces on both sides of ‘the pond’.