Darktown

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!

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’.

‘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]

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.

The scene is Atlanta, 1948, and the city has hired eight black police officers for the first time. Their powers are very limited, however, and there are a good many folks who’d like to see them fail. Officers Boggs and Smith see a white man in a car hit his passenger, a young coloured woman. She runs off, and is later found dead of a bullet wound, buried under rubbish on an abandoned lot. What follows is an extraordinary tale of racism so extreme and corruption so rife that at times it’s hard to bear reading it, yet such was life in that era. It’s easy to despise the corrupt white cops and their casual cruelty, and we feel for new (white) cop Rakestraw, a returned war hero, as he navigates his new reality, paired as he is with the bully Dunlow. It’s a tough world of moonshine, brothels, gambling, poor share-croppers and bribes. Thomas Mullen does a terrific job of bringing this era to life and endows his lead characters with complex and convincing psychologies. His next book, The Lightening Men follows the same characters two years later. An eye-opener.

Sehr schönes Buch 📙, leider kann nicht so gut Englisch lesen. Sodas ich es zurück schicken musste. Der Service und Kontakt ist sehr gut.

A primeira vez que li em um romance uma justificativa plausível para ação "vigilante" - merecida. E executada por policiais. Mas, sobretudo, dá para perceber as dificuldades enfrentadas pela população negra nos estados do sul dos EUA, e depois da II Guerra.

Le cadavre d'une jeune noire est découvert par deux des huit policiers noirs qui viennent d'être nommés par le maire d'Atlanta. Les premiers policiers noirs en Géorgie ! Problème, ils l'ont vue se faire maltraiter par un Blanc. Ils l'ont signalé au central qui a envoyé deux policiers blancs constater les faits. Ceux-ci n'ont pas donné suite. Le rapport des policiers noirs est caviardé. Et nous voilà lancés dans une enquête passionnante qui nous fait découvrir la vie dans un état du Sud en 1948. Je ne savais rien de la ségrégation raciale aux États-Unis, si ce n'est les clichés véhiculés par nos professeurs de morale qui, comme les curés d'antan, n'ont qu'un but : nous menacer des flammes de l'enfer pour des péchés que nous n'avons pas commis, je veux dire que n'en déplaise à Touche pas à mon pote, il n'y a pas de discrimination raciale en France. Quoi qu'il en soit, le roman est superbement écrit, donne des clés d'entrée pour comprendre cette Amérique ségrégationniste qui n'en a pas fini avec ses démons. Le style est superbe. Je l'ai lu sur kindle qui est venu à mon secours pour les expressions idiomatiques américaines que je ne connais pas, mon anglais étant celui de Buckingham Palace. Pour 0,99 euro, la découverte d'un grand auteur américain !

In the early 1950s, the city of Atlanta allows African American males to join the police force for the first time. Their job? To patrol the streets of Darktown, that part of the city where members of the Black community are permitted to live. Of course, African American cops are not allowed in the precinct offices. They have their own space in the basement of a tenement. There are bad guys and crooked cops and a disputed control of Darktown. Part novel, part mystery, part thriller, I found this a terrific read that provided insight into the kind of prejudice with which African Americans have had to contend for centuries.