Thomas Mullen’s upcoming novel, Darktown, which hits bookstores on September 12, may also be headed to the small screen. Deadline just announced that Sony Picture Television has acquired the rights to the novel and that a television show, based on the book, may be coming in the near future.
In a very competitive situation with five TV studios pursuing, Amy Pascal and Sony Pictures Television have landed the rights to Darktown, an upcoming crime novel by The Last Town on Earth author Thomas Mullen.
Deadline is also reporting that Jamie Foxx will be the executive producer, with Pascal Pictures Rachel O’Connor serving as producer. Read the rest of Deadline’s report here.
Here’s the plot info for Darktown, which is already available for pre-order
In the tradition of our most acclaimed suspense writers, the author of The Last Town on Earth delivers a riveting and elegant police procedural set in Atlanta, a ripped-from-the-headlines depiction of a world on the cusp of great change involving race relations, city politics, and police corruption.
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.
Set in the post-war, pre-civil rights South, and evoking the socially resonant and morally complex crime novels of Dennis Lehane, and Walter Mosley, Darktown is a vivid, smart, intricately plotted crime saga that explores the timely issues of race, law enforcement, and the uneven scales of justice.
I’ll be posting a full review of Darktown here on The Real Book Spy in the coming weeks, so make sure to check back soon!