Darktown

Award-winning author Thomas Mullen is a wonderful architect of intersecting plotlines and unexpected answers 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.

Officer Denny Rakestraw and "Negro Officers" Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith have their hands full in an overcrowded and rapidly changing Atlanta. It's 1950 and racial tensions are simmering as black families, including Smith's sister, begin moving into formerly all-white neighborhoods. When Rake's brother-in-law launches a scheme to rally the Ku Klux Klan to "save" their neighborhood, his efforts spiral out of control, forcing Rake to choose between loyalty to family or the law. Across town, Boggs and Smith try to shut down the supply of white lightning and drugs into their territory, finding themselves up against more powerful foes than they'd expected. Battling corrupt cops and ex-cons, Nazi brown shirts and rogue Klansmen, the officers are drawn closer to the fires that threaten to consume the city once again.

Internationally acclaimed and award-winning crime author Thomas Mullen returns with a bold, fresh look at the social and political upheaval that shook Atlanta during the era of Jim Crow and the Red Scare. It's 1955 and ex-cop Tommy Smith is working as a crime writer for the only daily black newspaper in America when his boss, a prominent publisher with a politically complex past, turns up murdered, a group of corrupt white cops takes the opportunity to make sure Smith is prime suspect. To clear his name, Smith will need to enlist the help of his old boss, the resilient Sergeant McInnis-who has logged seven difficult years as the only white cop in a black precinct. As the Montgomery Bus Boycott begins and white Atlantans recoil from the burgeoning Civil Rights movement, McInnis finds himself at a crossroads. He's finally been offered the opportunity to transfer back to the white headquarters, but it's too good to be true. It's up to him to figure out what strings are attached to the offer, and what the change will mean for his subordinate officers and his city as a whole. As anti-Communist fervor and racial fears stoke the city, Smith and McInnis must wander through a gauntlet of federal agents, dirty cops, and crime bosses to find the truth.