This volume, together with its predecessor, suggests strongly that Mullen is working on an epic of mid-20th-century American...
This knotty, multilayered thriller set near the cusp of the civil rights movement illustrates how crime and punishment in racially segregated Atlanta could be far more complex than relatively simple matters of black and white.
Though it has since labeled itself “the city too busy to hate,” Atlanta in 1950, as depicted in Mullen’s follow-up to Darktown (2016), is a grim, wary Southern citadel where racial prejudice is embedded in the local psyche. Since a segregated citizenry is patrolled by a segregated police force, African-American police officers such as straight-laced preacher’s son Lucius Boggs and his more street-wise partner, Tommy Smith, struggle to keep the peace in the volatile, predominantly black community known as Darktown. Meanwhile, Denny Rakestraw, a white policeman who doesn’t like racists but goes along with custom in order to get along with his fellow officers, is able to move his family to a relatively bucolic residential area called Hanford Park, where tensions are rising over its first African-American homeowners. Matters are complicated when the grass-roots drive to force the families out is abetted by local Nazis who are so far to the right, they think the Ku Klux Klan, of which Denny’s brother-in-law Dale is a short-fused, dull-witted member, is too soft on integration. While Hanford Park simmers, Darktown explodes in street fights and shootouts over the distribution and sale of drugs and bootlegged liquor (aka “white lightning”) in the black neighborhood. As disparate as these events seem on the surface, their myriad ramifications intersect, involving the families—and destinies—of all three policemen struggling in different ways to keep the peace. As is the case with such novels, Mullen’s narrative has to contend with the demands of both the mystery and historical fiction genres. The blend isn’t always neatly balanced. But Mullen proves himself throughout to be a savvy, observant, and empathetic chronicler of a city’s struggle to reconcile its warring impulses with the looming imperatives of social change.
This volume, together with its predecessor, suggests strongly that Mullen is working on an epic of mid-20th-century American transformation. If so, the growth of his three protagonists promises to be both fascinating and painful to watch.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3879-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: 37 Ink/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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