"Lightning Men" Dark but not Bleak

With the second book of the Darktown series by Thomas Mullen, Atlanta's first black policemen are caught at the intersection of gang war, police corruption, and a real estate dilemma: what is a fair-minded white homeowner to do when nice black families move onto his street and his dream home's value instantly plummets?

The book's title Lightning Men refers to American fascists who adopted Hitler's lightning insignia in the 1930s. After the war, they're back to intimidate communists, foreigners, and any blacks who dare to buy homes in white neighborhoods. 

 
Mullen writes in third person, but focuses different chapters through different characters. Black officers Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith hold the center of the story, along with their reluctant white ally Officer Dennis "Rake" Rakestraw. But Mullen gives us other characters' points of view: Julie, fiancee to Lucius; Sgt. McGinnis, the ramrod straight white officer fighting on behalf of the black men in his charge; Rake's wife Cassie; and two other characters who steal the show.

First, we meet the young black man Jeremiah as he walks out of prison, hoping to start a new life in Atlanta. He wants to go straight, but, without support, he's soon back in the drug trade that killed his older brother. He's also stymied in his effort to re-connect with his young son and the boy's mother Julie -- because she's engaged to Officer Boggs. When Boggs and Jeremiah meet face-to-face in a diner, Mullen heightens the tension by alternating their points of view. Jeremiah finds a weakness in Lucius. He keeps his thoughts to himself as Lucius talks: "I know what you fear. You fear sin. You are surrounded by it, and you have invited it into your family, so let's see how you like realizing that"(325). 

 
Then, there's Dale, who thinks he can earn respect by donning a ridiculous pointy white hood of the Ku Klux Klan, but he can't even see through the eye holes. When he gets in too deep, which is immediately, he runs for help to his brother-in-law on the force, Officer Rakestraw. Rake compromises himself to help. 

 
As Mullen plays Jeremiah off of Lucius, and Dale off of Rake, he also matches volatile Officer Tommy Smith with his brother-in-law Malcolm, whose secret Tommy feels bound to protect. 

 
Besides chapters where characters vie for dominance with intense, witty dialogue, Mullen writes some that stand out for action and suspense. There's an epic fist fight between Officer Dewey Edwards, the strongest, smallest cop on the force, and Thunder Malloy, biggest baddest drug dealer in town. There's a vigil past midnight by Tommy and his brother-in-law in a darkened house as they watch two, then four, then two or three dozen white neighbors gathering across the street: What will the white people do to keep their neighborhood from "transitioning?" For emotion, and dread, and sympathy, there's a scene in Atlanta's old train terminal where a black family from up north refuses to sit in the fouled "colored" waiting room; Rake tries to respect the family's dignity while an angry white mob forms around him. 

 
Set seventy years ago, the issues in Lightning Men are as up-to-date as our President's recent tweet to housewives about how "they" want to move in next door and destroy the suburbs with sinking property value. In one scene, the fictional Reverend Boggs sits at a table with the real Reverend William Borders (his grandson my classmate in the 1970s) to make a deal with white developers to re-draw the red lines that kept generations of black families from building wealth. The eponymous fascists peddle their version of today's "white genocide" narrative propagated by the young men in Virginia who chanted "Jews will not replace us." 

 
The novel is dark, but not bleak. I've already ordered the latest book in the series.
See my response to the first book, Darktown (06/2020)
.