Responding from pressure on high, the Atlanta police department is forced to hire its first black officers in 1948. The newly minted policemen are met with deep hostility by their white peers and their authority is limited: They can’t arrest white suspects; they can’t drive a squad car; they can’t even use the police headquarters and must instead operate out of the basement of a gym. When a black woman who was last seen in a car driven by a white man turns up fatally beaten, no one seems to care except for Boggs and Smith, two black cops from vastly different backgrounds. Pressured from all sides, they will risk their jobs, the trust the community has put in them, and even their own safety to investigate her death. Their efforts bring them up against an old-school cop, Dunlow, who has long run the neighborhood like his own, and Dunlow’s young partner, Rakestraw, a young progressive who may or may not be willing to make allies across color lines.

From the acclaimed author of The Last Town on Earth comes the gripping follow-up to Darktown, a “combustible procedural that will knock the wind out of you” (The New York Times). Officer Denny Rakestraw, “Negro Officers” Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith, and Sergeant McInnis have their hands full in an overcrowded and rapidly changing Atlanta. It’s 1950 and color lines are shifting and racial tensions are simmering. Black families—including Smith’s sister and brother-in-law—are moving into Rake’s formerly all-white neighborhood, leading some residents to raise money to buy them out, while others advocate a more violent solution. Rake’s brother-in-law, Dale, a proud Klansman, launches a scheme to rally his fellow Kluxers to save their neighborhood. When those efforts spiral out of control and leave a man dead, Rake is forced to choose between loyalty to family or the law. He isn’t the only one with family troubles. Boggs has outraged his preacher father by courting a domestic, and now her ex-boyfriend has been 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.

Midnight Atlanta is the stunning new novel in the award-nominated, critically acclaimed Darktown series, and sees a newspaper editor murdered against the backdrop of Rosa Parks' protest and Martin Luther King Jnr's emergence. Atlanta, 1956. When Arthur Bishop, editor of Atlanta's leading black newspaper, is killed in his office, cop-turned-journalist Tommy Smith finds himself in the crosshairs of the racist cops he's been trying to avoid. To clear his name, he needs to learn more about the dangerous story Bishop had been working on. Meanwhile, Smith's ex-partner Lucius Boggs and white sergeant Joe McInnis - the only white cop in the black precinct - find themselves caught between meddling federal agents, racist detectives, and Communist activists as they try to solve the murder. With a young Rev. Martin Luther King Jnr making headlines of his own, and tensions in the city growing, Boggs and Smith find themselves back on the same side in a hunt for the truth that will put them both at risk. PRAISE FOR THE DARKTOWN SERIES 'A brilliant blending of crime, mystery, and American history. Terrific entertainment' Stephen King 'Superb' Ken Follett 'Magnificent and shocking' Sunday Times 'Written with a ferocious passion that'll knock the wind out of you' New York Times