A Little Too Much

Thomas Mullen certainly gives his readers the service they want with Lightning Men. Building off the previous novel, Darktown, Mullen goes deeper into the plight of Boggs and Smith and their careers as Atlanta’s first African-American police officers. He builds on the story of Officer Denny Rakestraw, a white officer who is not totally opposed to the idea of black officers, but finds himself living in a transition town – white suburbia now threatened to become another Darktown. Mullen’s plot twists and turns with real estate deals, moonshine and marijuana, and tensions between the always-incompetent KKK and their threatening successors, the Colombians. All and this more is breached cover-to-cover in one of the very few times that the old adage once made famous by Sir Mick about too much never being enough is unfortunately not true as Lightning Men suffers from that dreaded curse of sequelitis.

You know, that stigmata is not entirely fair. Lightning Men is a compelling, well-written, and highly entertaining read. Mullen fleshes out 1950s Atlanta and presents the attitude of the city and the blatant bigotry throughout. Mullen digs deeper with his plot, tying various, complicated threads to key characters and letting the reader watch it all unfold. Yet, some of this plot is too obtuse. The map presented sprawls and rambles as long and as wide as Peachtree Street. Maybe Mullen binge watches Game of Thrones and as such, gives too much importance to the B-, C-, and D-story arcs, thus taking away the importance – and the very relevance – of the A-story. Crime novel readers don’t want a ramble down a shady lane in the sun. They want a punch to the gut. Hard punches. With a blow to the nose and a killer uppercut to knock you out. Lightning Men doesn’t have enough punches, but plenty of weaving and feints.

Lightning Men is a worthy follow-up and is successful in structuring, then embellishing, the characters’ arcs. However, too many new characters are introduced and with that comes a level of convenience in working the plot around these new characters and as a result, the story suffers.

Just a little. But just too much.

Yet not enough to keep me away from my next visit to Darktown.


As Always,
theJOE

A Murder in Darktown most Noir

Historical fiction at its best. Thomas Mullen presents a very real, not-too distant past of post-WWII where, as more of a PR event than actual progressive behavior, the Atlanta PD recruits African-American patrolmen, but denies them any actual authority. What happens in Darktown is standard noir fare – a man out of his element, a complex murder mystery, corrupt power – but Mullen’s setting is distinct and unique, not to mention depressing in ways that pre-Civil Rights tend to be.

Mullen’s writing style is a pleasure to read. He creates fantastically-believable, yet flawed as all humans are, characters that are ripe and real, that both dream and are subdued.  For this setting in the Atlanta summertime, the sun, and its heat, is just as much of a presence as are the story’s heroes and victims. Such as officers Boggs and Smith, two of the new Atlanta patrolmen who call Darktown their beat, who must deal with racism and social inadequacies, not only from the scores of white policemen, but also the community they desperately want to protect and serve. There is a fine line in playing the role of guardian and savior, a balance Boggs and Smith must learn, especially as they begin to look into the murder of a young African-American woman.   

Mullen takes the reader both on a tour of 1950s Atlanta as well as into the justifications of Darktown’s central characters - Smith and Boggs, as well their white counterparts, Rakestraw and Dunlow – whose inner drives, and demons, are not as simple as black and white. Murder may always be a dark deed, but is justice always bright? Mullen, in a most excellent story, crafts his answer.

Give Darktown a read!

As Always.

theJOE