Darktown

Name: Darktown
Author: Thomas Mullen
ISBN: 9781501133879

Thomas Mullen

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Darktown

Thomas Mullen

awards won

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In 1948, 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. But they carry guns, and they must bring law enforcement to a deeply mistrustful community. When a black woman who was last seen in a car driven by a white man turns up dead, Boggs and Smith take up the investigation on their own, as no one else seems to care. Their findings set 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.

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