Hello again. Welcome to the 39th issue of A Shot of Jack, my weekly newsletter. Last week’s newsletter resulted in a couple of people unsubscribing and a couple of people subscribing. Also no feedback whatsoever.
So I’m making a promise to you. I will not review another video game about 15th century monk artist murder investigations.
This issue I’m going to try something new. Thanks to experience and education, I tend to read books like a writer. I’m not just enjoying the story. I’m also looking at what makes the story succeed or fail. The mechanics of storytelling is just as important to me as the story itself.
So rather than simply give a surface review of a crime novel I read, I’m giving a deep dive into an aspect of craft that impressed me.
If you dig this sort of thing, let me know.
Also if you don’t dig this sort of thing, let me know.
You have the benefit of being a small enough audience that your feedback will actually matter.
What I’m Reading -The Shifting Perspectives in Thomas Mullen’s Darktown
In Darktown, author Thomas Mullen tells a whodunit against the backdrop of 1948 Atlanta, Georgia with one of the protagonists being a Black police officer. Mullen shifts perspectives throughout the book and as a result manages to give the reader a multifaceted view on racism and bigotry in the deep South.
Darktown first gives the reader a view of the ‘colored’ section of 1948 Atlanta from Officer Boggs, one of eight Black beat cops. (Though still a novel, Darktown is based on real Atlanta history.) While walking the beat with his partner, Smith, a squad car with two white cops swerves towards them:
Then the squad car sped off, the white cops laughing hysterically.
You couldn’t show fear. They acted like it was all a harmless prank, even when they gunned their engines at you when you were crossing the street, even when they nearly grazed against you. More than once Boggs had stood in the road to flag down a squad car, needing assistance for an arrest, when the car had accelerated toward him until he’d had to leap out of the way. Laughter in its wake. Surely, if the day came when they actually did run over one of the colored officers, they would insist that it was an accident. (4)
The use of second person puts the reader in Boggs’s head. This passage tells the reader that this sort of thing is a regular occurrence, that Boggs has gotten used to it, and that he’s all too aware of the real danger he and his fellow Black officers are in from white officers. Mullen also manages to include the fact that the white cops view their threatening to run over fellow officers just because they’re Black as some sort of game.
Later, he writes from the perspective of a cop named Dunlow. Dunlow is a fat, white, racist cop who basically embodies the Southern racist cop stereotype. This is how we’re introduced to his perspective:
At the front, Dunlow hit the door like it owed him money.
“‘Police, open up!’
The door did not obey. He pounded it again and could see the gaps around the door widen with each blow. Niggers couldn’t afford decent doors. Even the ones who moved to the better neighborhoods, he’d noticed, had weak doors. The ones who wanted to act white and let you think they were above the fray. Just pound on the door and the truth revealed itself right quick. (24)
Mullen doesn’t simply use a racial epithet to convey Dunlow’s overt racism, he highlights it with a racist generalization, plus the implied information that Dunlow is used to knocking down the doors of the homes of Black citizens regardless of their social status. Throughout the novel there isn’t much to like about Dunlow, but by giving the reader Dunlow’s perspective readers can at least see what sort of thoughts are going on in that racist head of his.
Perhaps the most interesting perspective Mullen gives his readers is that of Officer Rakestraw. Rakestraw is Dunlow’s partner. He is not an overt racist. In fact by 1948 standards he isn’t racist at all. Mullen does an admirable job of showing how Rakestraw’s thoughts are both progressive compared to Dunlow’s and outright racist compared to present day sensibilities. When Rakestraw is helping a Black man who has moved into his neighborhood clean up glass after the man’s windows are broken, Rakestraw is surprised when his suggestion that the man move his family to another neighborhood is taken as an offense:
It was so difficult to walk this line. To let colored people know that just because you were the same color as fire-breathing racists didn’t mean you agreed with them. And at the same time, just because you were talking to a colored person and desperately trying to impart some wisdom and necessary advice, that didn’t mean that you agreed with what Calvin was doing to his wife and kids, or to your own neighborhood. (122)
It is at these points where Mullen blurs the stereotypical lines that the book really shines. Boggs witnesses his partner savagely beat a suspect, but he chooses not to report it. Later when Boggs thinks about it he ends up asking some very important questions.
Maybe the beating wasn’t such a big deal. Boggs had seen a few white cops administer beat-downs like that. If they were here to be cops, to learn how to do the job and do it well, what was the harm in emulating the veteran cops? Did they want to be better than them, or become them? (172)
These questions are not answered. But they not only show the perspective of Boggs, but how his perspective is beginning to shift. This sort of work ads depth and realism to the character of Boggs. His experiences are changing his perspective and the reader gets to witness that. This is what makes Mullen’s use of perspective so powerful. By using various characters approaching the same environment from different perspectives and then having those perspectives shift due to the experiences of those characters Mullen has crafted a compelling narrative in which the reader cares about what happens because the characters are capable of change.
Darktown is available at your local independent bookseller on amazon. And if you enjoy it, Mullen has already written two sequels, Lightning Men, and Midnight, Atlanta.
What I’m Clicking On
Iranians hired Hell’s Angels to kill a couple of people in Maine. It didn’t work out.
So those Stanley Cups that everyone has been so excited about have a lead base.
One Last Thing
I receive a lot of email and advertisements about how to optimize my newsletter, how to ‘convert’ free subscribers to paying subscribers, in short, how to get rich quick in this newsletter game.
What I’ve found is that I would simply rather spend my time writing. I don’t want to learn how to game the system, how to beat algorithms, how to stop Artificial Intelligence content from flooding the Internet so nothing can be found.
I want to write.
So thank you for finding me. Thank you for sticking around.
I appreciate it. And if you like what I’m doing, forward this to a friend.
- Jack Cameron
Looking forward to reading Darktown