A rewarding reading experience completely immerses you in a world where you breathe the characters in it-- their thoughts, their emotions, how their lives function in the culture. Sometimes the joy comes from an escape into an imaginary world you have never dreamed of. Sometimes the experience is an enlightenment about a reality you never fully grasped before.
Thomas Mullen's Darktown series covers a terrible, shameful time in America not so very long ago. Just after World War II Atlanta hired eight black police officers as a cosmetic show for votes. These men were limited to working only the black neighborhoods, were not allowed to arrest a white person, were not issued squad cars, and for their own protection were not even allowed to step into the white police station--as that might offend the white officers, many who were Klan members.
"Midnight Atlanta" is the third in the series, set in 1956 during the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. The editor of Atlanta's black newspaper has been murdered and the black police have the task of solving the case in the face of overwhelming prejudice from their own force, the FBI, even members of their own community who have personal issues at stake.
Like the two previous books in this saga, "Midnight Atlanta" rates five stars from me. It works on a crime mystery level while it awakens you to real struggles real people had to endure at the hands of others. Hard to use the term "enjoy" here for my reading, as recent events have shown we have not progressed much at all.
Thank you NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. #MidnightAtlanta #NetGalley
"If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress... progress is healing the wound, and America hasn't even begun to pull out the knife." -- Malcolm X
Thomas Mullen's Darktown series covers a terrible, shameful time in America not so very long ago. Just after World War II Atlanta hired eight black police officers as a cosmetic show for votes. These men were limited to working only the black neighborhoods, were not allowed to arrest a white person, were not issued squad cars, and for their own protection were not even allowed to step into the white police station--as that might offend the white officers, many who were Klan members.
"Midnight Atlanta" is the third in the series, set in 1956 during the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. The editor of Atlanta's black newspaper has been murdered and the black police have the task of solving the case in the face of overwhelming prejudice from their own force, the FBI, even members of their own community who have personal issues at stake.
Like the two previous books in this saga, "Midnight Atlanta" rates five stars from me. It works on a crime mystery level while it awakens you to real struggles real people had to endure at the hands of others. Hard to use the term "enjoy" here for my reading, as recent events have shown we have not progressed much at all.
Thank you NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. #MidnightAtlanta #NetGalley
"If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress... progress is healing the wound, and America hasn't even begun to pull out the knife." -- Malcolm X
