Review: Darktown

Darktown by Thomas Mullen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In 1948 the mayor of Atlanta, Georgia hired eight black police officers in a pact to secure votes in black neighbourhoods. The officers, at least one of whom was a veteran of World War II, were restricted to patrolling black areas of the city and could not, under any circumstances, arrest white people. This startling hypocrisy extended to the officers’ squad room, the basement of the local YMCA as segregation meant that they were prohibited from entering the main police headquarters.

Thomas Mullen’s ‘Dark Town’ is an intelligent and literate thriller set in Atlanta just after the city has, controversially, employed these first eight ‘coloured’ police officers. It is a time when “antilynching legislation … kept failing in Washington” and the commanding officer concentrates on “trying to make sure his Negro officers didn’t screw up while also trying to keep the white officers from flat-out attacking his “men.” ”

Lucius Boggs and his partner Tommy Smith witness a white driver crash into a lamppost in ‘Dark Town’, the negro quarter they patrol. The driver, whose young black female passenger appears to have been beaten, refuses to wait while Boggs contacts the ‘real’ police. When the girl later turns up dead Boggs decides to investigate, strictly against the regulations. Meanwhile, Dennis Rakestraw, a white police officer, also a war veteran, becomes increasingly disillusioned by the actions of his openly racist partner, Lionel Dunlow. And, when it becomes apparently that Dunlow has some connection to the car driver and, by extension, the murdered girl, Rake’s and Boggs’ investigations overlap.

Mullen’s characters and setting are incredibly well realised. The Atlanta background feels real and the racism experienced by the black officers, overt and casual, is authentic. The characters, even the worst of them, are rounded with understandable, albeit in many cases disagreeable, motivations. The resentment and suspicion felt by both the white and black communities towards each other, that suspicion extended to the ‘Uncle Tom’ officers by many of their neighbours, the ‘threat’ felt by whites witnessing the expansion of the black middle-class - the author paints all of these vividly. A satisfying and thought provoking historical novel about a period I knew very little about. Highly recommended.

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Review: Since We Fell

Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“On a Tuesday in May, in her thirty-fifth year, Rachel shot her husband dead. He stumbled backward with an odd look of confirmation on his face, as if some part of him had always known she’d do it.”

‘Since We Fell’ opens in a way I have come to expect from Dennis Lehane - in the heart of the action, a crime (?) committed. Who is Rachel Childs and why has she killed her husband? And then….

And then, it is not that novel. What follows is a ‘literary’ novel, the story of a woman whose life is dominated by the missing. Denied her father’s identity by her controlling and manipulative mother, Rachel tries to find him. Becoming an reporter, she is haunted, firstly by those taken by the hurricane in Haiti, then by those taken by the rape gangs who follow in its wake. Rachel is unhappy, unfulfilled and close to breakdown but, despite her issues, perhaps because of them, she is hard to root for. Lehane writes brilliantly and some of his prose is stunningly good but Rachel is not an entirely sympathetic character. She is needy, self-absorbed and a bit whiny… But her story is captivating. Even as I struggled with the direction of the book, trying to work out exactly what I was reading, where Lehane was going, I was enjoying it immensely. The story moves slowly, there is little in the way of real plot, but I enjoyed the writing, the commentary on modern American values, the media.

“God. I want the capital-G God the televangelists claim moves tornadoes out of their paths. The one who cures cancer and arthritis in the faithful, the God professional athletes thank for taking an interest in the outcome of the Super Bowl or the World Cup or a home run hit in the eighty-seventh game of the hundred sixty-two played by the Red Sox this year.”

And then, it is not that novel.

About halfway through ‘Since We Fell’ goes in a different direction. You don’t see it coming. It is so jarring that it is almost as if you have started another novel, one that is pretty much all about plot, and I suppose how the reader reacts to this, accepts this, is down to how much you like, and trust, Dennis Lehane. Having read Lehane since the Kenzie and Gennaro novels, I was prepared to go with him. And I am glad I did.

I won’t go into the details of the second half of ‘Since We Fell’. It is only fair for others to enjoy (or be infuriated by) the abrupt transition. In terms of Lehane’s work I suspect this is a bit of an experiment, a flawed but enjoyable and worthwhile experiment.

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Review: The Liar

The Liar by Steve Cavanagh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Steve Cavanagh's third Eddie Flynn novel is his best yet. Obviously inspired by Grisham and Connelly, with 'The Liar' Cavanagh comes very close to matching him. The story follows the same basic pattern of the previous two novels - an unusual case, lots of action, a courtroom battle in which more is at stake than meets the eye, short, fast moving chapters which, like Saturday morning Flash Gordon serials, end on cliffhangers which make you want to keep reading. Cavanagh is becoming a master of these WTF moments and there are many fewer instances in 'The Liar' where I felt the narrator, Eddie Flynn, was withholding information from me. In other words, the surprises and twists arise naturally from the plot. And, of course, Eddie Flynn, street-smart, ex-conman turned defence lawyer, is an engaging character.

The time around Eddie is acting for the father of a kidnapped daughter, a security specialist who believes he knows better than the FBI how to get his daughter back and is probably going to break the law to do so. Eddie gets more involved in the action than a lawyer would be expected to, gets to punch people, gets to cross-examine people, all the while trying to work out, as the reader is, exactly what is going on. And it is great fun. The pace is frenetic. It's not perfect but it is very very entertaining and I look forward to what Steve Cavanagh and Eddie Flynn do next.

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