Dark Town Redemption: A Novel of Suspense

This latest novel from Hardwick (The Executioner's Game) is a fairly heavy-handed, stereotypical take on race relations in the late 1960s. After combat in Vietnam, African-American Robert Jackson returns home to Detroit in 1967 to discover racial unrest. His family reunion sours when he realizes his younger brother, Marcus, has joined a radical group fighting for civil rights. Meanwhile, rookie cop Thomas Riley is pounding his beat, maintaining family traditions, and trying to come to terms with the police department's rampant racism and brutality. Riley's and Jackson's paths inevitably collide when Marcus is murdered under circumstances that suggest the fatal shot was fired by the police and without justification. Jackson instantly turns radical himself and sets out to find the truth about his brother's death. The plot lacks the ragged edges that would be more consistent with an honest portrayal of the turmoil of the times, and a cloying epilogue does much to vitiate any realism previously attained.