Darktown by Thomas Mullen

Published by Atria/37 INK on September 13, 2016

Darktown begins a few months after the first black police officers are sworn into the Atlanta Police Department. The key characters are a new black officer named Lucius Boggs and a new white officer named Dennis Rakestraw (Rake). Boggs is partnered with another black officer named Tommy Smith. Rake is partnered with Dunlow, an aging cop who prefers to beat black suspects rather than arrest them. Dunlow also encourages witnesses to lie and solicits bribes. Part of the novel involves the moral dilemma that Rake confronts as he decides whether justice includes finding the truth about crimes against black victims rather than blaming the crime on a convenient black suspect.

The primary plot thread concerns the murder of a black woman. Boggs and Smith last see her alive as she flees from a white man’s car. The white man is drunk and crashes into a light pole, but when they call white officers to investigate (because they have no authority to arrest or detain white suspects), Dunlow has a chummy conversation with the driver and lets him go. After the woman’s body is found, Boggs investigates her murder. Since he isn’t a detective, he places his job at risk by delving into a murder investigation, but the murder doesn’t seem to interest the white detectives. Whether justice will be done is the question that carries the novel.

Thomas Mullen has a nuanced view of his characters. The racists have their good moments and the victims of oppression have their bad moments. There is enough complexity in their personalities to make the primary characters realistic, rather than the stereotypes that novels set in a racist environment often become.

In the first half, the plot is just a frame for a larger story of racial injustice. The story’s background details stand as a reminder of how blatant racism endured in the south after the Second World War. Black officers entered the police station and the courthouse via a separate entrance, but they were headquartered in the basement of the black YMCA. They could not enter the courthouse wearing uniforms, but were required to change into their uniforms before testifying (and were assigned a broom closet for that purpose). Unlike white officers, they were not paid overtime for testifying.

The purpose of hiring black officers (at least from Boggs’ perspective) was to stop police brutality, but white officers continue to beat and kill black citizens. Yet the black community leaders (including Boggs’ father), eager for the new black officers to make waves in the department, don’t understand or appreciate what the new officers must endure every day if they want to keep their jobs — and their lives.

The first half might be a bit overdone, sacrificing pace for building a background. Fortunately, the story builds tension in the second half as Boggs and Rake pursue separate but converging investigations when they should be walking their beats. The crime is more complex than it first appears to be, which gives the story an extra shot of intrigue. The plot has the hallmarks of a classic noir mystery, making the novel an enjoyable read both for mystery fans and for readers who want to get a better sense of life in the segregated south shortly after World War II.

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