Darktown
3 primary works • 5 total works
Book 1
Book 1
Book 2
'A brilliant blending of crime, mystery, and American history. Terrific entertainment'
Stephen King on Darktown
Lightning Men follows the multi-award-nominated, highly acclaimed crime debut Darktown into a city on the brink of huge and violent change - and full of secrets.
Atlanta, 1950. Crime divides, the fight unites.
Officer Denny Rakestraw and 'Negro Officers' Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith face the Klan, gangs and family warfare in a rapidly changing Atlanta.
Black families - including Smith's sister and brother-in-law - are moving into Rake's formerly all-white neighbourhood, leading his brother-in-law, a proud Klansman, to launch a scheme to 'save' their streets. When those efforts leave a man dead, Rake is forced to choose between loyalty to family or the law.
Meanwhile, Boggs has outraged his preacher father by courting a domestic, whose dangerous ex-boyfriend is then released from prison. As Boggs, Smith, and their all-black precinct contend with violent drug dealers fighting for turf in new territory, their personal dramas draw them closer to the fires that threaten to consume Atlanta once again.
Praise for Thomas Mullen
'Magnificent and shocking'
Sunday Times
'Written with a ferocious passion that'll knock the wind out of you'
New York Times
Midnight Atlanta is the stunning new novel in the award-nominated, critically acclaimed Darktown series, and sees a newspaper editor murdered against the backdrop of Rosa Parks' protest and Martin Luther King Jnr's emergence.
Atlanta, 1956.
When Arthur Bishop, editor of Atlanta's leading black newspaper, is killed in his office, cop-turned-journalist Tommy Smith finds himself in the crosshairs of the racist cops he's been trying to avoid. To clear his name, he needs to learn more about the dangerous story Bishop had been working on.
Meanwhile, Smith's ex-partner Lucius Boggs and white sergeant Joe McInnis - the only white cop in the black precinct - find themselves caught between meddling federal agents, racist detectives, and Communist activists as they try to solve the murder.
With a young Rev. Martin Luther King Jnr making headlines of his own, and tensions in the city growing, Boggs and Smith find themselves back on the same side in a hunt for the truth that will put them both at risk.
PRAISE FOR THE DARKTOWN SERIES
'A brilliant blending of crime, mystery, and American history. Terrific entertainment'
Stephen King
'Superb'
Ken Follett
'Magnificent and shocking'
Sunday Times
'Written with a ferocious passion that'll knock the wind out of you'
New York Times