A powerful and emotional book set in the hot, angry summer of 1967 in Newark, N.J., THE LIGHTNING RULE by Brett Ellen Block is more than just an engaging police procedural.
Block uses her main character, Detective Martin Emmett, to explore police corruption and racism in a despairing hellhole of a city. Emmett is a homicide detective, but he’s been demoted to the basement records room for failing to solve a recent murder. He also doesn’t get along with some of the other detectives, and this is a good way to punish him.
Yet another punishment is to give him a tough case: a murdered black man found deep in a subway tunnel. There are few leads and the ones he can find point to the dangerous projects. Emmett’s investigation plays out against a riot that envelops the city and causes the governor to call out the National Guard. Barricades at street intersections and the powder keg of heightened racial tensions make the detective’s job even more difficult.
The author handles all this material capably, though perhaps there is a bit too much corruption in the Newark force. Martin Emmett and his handicapped brother Edward are well-drawn, and the family dynamics and their strained dialogue all seem appropriate.
Block really doesn’t play up the periodicity, content to mention a few ’60s TV shows and to note the lack of law enforcement technology for the time. But she does emphasize the supremely tense race relations, both the casual racism of the ignorant and the blatant hatred of the mindless.
The oppression so prevalent in the book forces you to come up for air every once in a while, but then you’re sucked right back in to see how Detective Emmett is faring. A thoroughly good read. –Mark Rose
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