Lightning Menby Thomas Mullen37Ink/Atria, 2017Thomas Mullen's 2016 novel Darktown, about two black police officers, Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith, in racially supercharged postwar Atlanta, won a slew of high-profile awards and plaudits and thoroughly deserved every one of them. The book took readers inside the world of two brave, honest cops who weren't allowed to be seen wearing their uniforms when off the job (even when entering and leaving the decrepit gymnasium where they changed clothes, since they aren't allowed to do so in the precinct house), weren't allowed to arrest white suspects, weren't allowed to drive a squad car, and whose authority didn't extend past the Negro neighborhoods they patrolled. The novel's elegantly-designed parallel plots brought Boggs and Smith into conflict with a white cop of long-standing power and corruption, and also brought that cop's idealistic young partner, Denny “Rake” Rakestraw, into conflict with the moral compromises that seemed to be demanded of him on all sides, particularly since the Ku Klux Klan has been entwined with the police hierarchy for as long as anybody can remember as a necessary résumé item on the path to promotion.Rake, Boggs, and Smith all return for Mullen's new novel, Lightning Men, which is every bit as muscular and racing as Darktown. In this new book, Boggs and Smith are once again fighting the good fight, this time against drug-runners and “white lightning” rum-runners. Boggs is dealing with domestic frictions at home, where his pompous father (“Reverend Boggs dropped names the way hungry men dropped crumbs, littering the floor with them as he ate”) condescends to his girlfriend Julie, and on his own side of time, Rake is likewise dealing with domestic problems, although his are significantly more dire: his brother-in-law Dale, “the very manifestation of lowered expectations,” has come to him and confessed his involvement in a violent incident in which some Klan members killed a white man and fled the scene. At a loss for what to do, Dale comes to his brother-in-law and confesses everything – including the fact that he left his white hood behind when he fled. And even in his shock and outrage, Rake can't stop being a cop:

“Jesus [Rake says] Did it have your name or initials stitched into it, any tailoring at all?”“Course not.” Dale dared to scoff at that, mocking Rake's ignorance about Kluxer attire.“You're sure? No merit badges for learning how to tie a knot or beat up old Negro ladies?”“ No. And I don't care for the way -”“Do you have any goddamn idea how much trouble you're in?” He struggled to keep his voice down lest he wake the kids. “Someone might have seen your tags. Was it a dirt drive? If so, you left tread marks. You left shell casings. And who else knew you were going there?”

The world Mullen so carefully creates in these pages will be familiar to readers of Jim Thompson, P.D. James, and especially James Elroy, a world full of compromises where there's nevertheless a wide, almost evangelical divide between good and evil. Most of the characters here live in that divide, and heroes traverse it warily, knowingly. Real things are at stake – indeed, given the raw state of race relations in 2017, Lightning Men is, among other things, searingly relevant – and Mullen never insults the reader by simplifying any of it. Lightning Men is even more engrossing than its terrific predecessor; Boggs and Smith and particularly Rake have gained flesh from their experiences, and Mullen's narrative skill, already impressive, even more textured. No reader of serious crime fiction should be missing these books.