Lightning Men

Product Description

'A brilliant blending of crime, mystery, and American history. Terrific entertainment'

Stephen King on DARKTOWN

LIGHTNING MEN follows the multi-award-nominated, highly acclaimed crime debut DARKTOWN into a city on the brink of huge and violent change - and full of secrets.

Atlanta, 1950. Crime divides, the fight unites.

Officer Denny Rakestraw and 'Negro Officers' Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith face the Klan, gangs and family warfare in a rapidly changing Atlanta.

Black families - including Smith's sister and brother-in-law - are moving into Rake's formerly all-white neighbourhood, leading his brother-in-law, a proud Klansman, to launch a scheme to 'save' their streets. When those efforts leave a man dead, Rake is forced to choose between loyalty to family or the law.

Meanwhile, Boggs has outraged his preacher father by courting a domestic, whose dangerous ex-boyfriend is then released from prison. As Boggs, Smith, and their all-black precinct contend with violent drug dealers fighting for turf in new territory, their personal dramas draw them closer to the fires that threaten to consume Atlanta once again.

Praise for Thomas Mullen

'Magnificent and shocking'

Sunday Times

'Written with a ferocious passion that'll knock the wind out of you'

New York Times'A brilliant blending of crime, mystery, and American history. Terrific entertainment'

Stephen King on DARKTOWN

LIGHTNING MEN follows the multi-award-nominated, highly acclaimed crime debut DARKTOWN into a city on the brink of huge and violent change - and full of secrets.

Atlanta, 1950. Crime divides, the fight unites.

Officer Denny Rakestraw and 'Negro Officers' Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith face the Klan, gangs and family warfare in a rapidly changing Atlanta.

Black families - including Smith's sister and brother-in-law - are moving into Rake's formerly all-white neighbourhood, leading his brother-in-law, a proud Klansman, to launch a scheme to 'save' their streets. When those efforts leave a man dead, Rake is forced to choose between loyalty to family or the law.

Meanwhile, Boggs has outraged his preacher father by courting a domestic, whose dangerous ex-boyfriend is then released from prison. As Boggs, Smith, and their all-black precinct contend with violent drug dealers fighting for turf in new territory, their personal dramas draw them closer to the fires that threaten to consume Atlanta once again.

Praise for Thomas Mullen

'Magnificent and shocking'

Sunday Times

'Written with a ferocious passion that'll knock the wind out of you'

New York Times
Thomas Mullen is the author of the crime novels Darktown and Lightning Men. His book The Last Town on Earth was named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA TODAY. He was also awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction for The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers and The Revisionists. His works have been named to Year's Best lists by The Chicago Tribune and USA TODAY, among others. His stories and essays have been published in Grantland, Paste, and the Huffington Post, and his Atlanta Magazine true crime story about a novelist/con man won the City and Regional Magazine Award for Best Feature. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and sons.