Everything starts with the old white man. Drunk, he puts his car to a lamppost. The two black Cops can’t do anything, you have to let him continue, although he has a bleeding black girl.
Thomas Mullens novel “dark town” plays in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1948, and black police officers have no powers compared to White. You drive the car, no stripes, just go into black neighborhoods to Patrol, wearing her Uniform on the way to or from work. The police headquarters is allowed only through the side entrance, they have their Headquarters in the basement of the YMCA in the “black quarter”.
DISPLAY Thomas Mullen:
dark town
Translation: Berni Mayer
Dumont, 480 pages, 24 Euro
link to Amazon. In the case of Thalia order.
And you need a thick skin: 95 percent of the police officers reject black Cops in General, each of the fourth Officer is a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Racist insults are commonplace, black Cops will be displayed on flimsy grounds by white colleagues, and, allegedly, a head presented within the Police Department even money for the first murder of a black policeman. Eight of them since April, 1948, in the patrol service, was made possible at all only because of the former mayor for his re-election to the urgent voices of the black district needed, and a Deal went down.
Mullen takes a lot of time, the historical facts spread, shows the racism within and outside the police in an infinite variety of shades. Against this true Background, he tells the fictional story of a murder, the supposed to be never solved. The girl from the accident car is found a few days later, in a filthy backyard, disposed of like a piece of garbage. Still a murdered, Black, who cares? The Dead will lie in the morgue until someone after you ask. And if not, “and threw away the corpse as soon as space for a new dead Negro was needed”.
Behind every crime has a racist motive
the One case that interested anyone until a white police rookie, and two of the “Negro Officers”. This unlikely Trio begin to investigate under the most difficult conditions, actually none Netspor of them is entitled to do so. Other problems: The Dead worked in the household of a member of Congress, not to be questioned, of course; and the drunk old white man from the beginning turns out to be the Ex-Cop, the power for the Police Department to the dirty work.
A murder, the traces of which result in the highest circles of corruption, which has a whole city in the grip, and upright police officers, to enlighten all of the resistors in Spite of their case – the ingredients of Mullens “dark town” belong to the standard repertoire of the contemporary crime novel. All too routinely, the Plot rewinds, and one would wish that Mullen makes often of the Genre conventions-free, and that he gives his characters more space and depth, so they act less like.
the author, Thomas Mullen
Mullen told to cumbersome, explains too much. And, above all, he creates it different from other white authors such as George Pelecanos or Richard Price, who write about racism, to reproduce the various Sound of the road. Of the very careful Translation by the writer Berni Mayer you can’t give the debt, these weaknesses come from the Original.
Ultimately, the great strength of the novel is also its weakness. Thomas Mullen has enormous a lot of research, know the facts and felt every alley in Atlanta from 1948. However, he arranges the Story at any time his concern. What makes the plot although predictable – behind every crime in “dark town” is a racist motive, but no less urgent. What Mullen told here, this is a similar happening at that time. Again and again. And it happens even today.
As Paul Beatty’s Recently on German-released Satire “The traitor” in all the Excesses of a mirror image of reality, one must read Thomas Mullens historical novel as a commentary on racism in the United States today. He clearly shows that the past is not gone really, but only transformed. Therefore, dark town, “” not one of the best crime novels of the year, but the most important.
