Smoke Kings

Starred review from December 18, 2023
In Mayfield’s powerful debut, four Black vigilantes in New Jersey seek justice for the racially motivated killing of their leader’s younger cousin. Their plan is to kidnap the descendants of past perpetrators of hate crimes and force them to pay financial reparations for their ancestors’ acts. The scheme starts to go off the rails when Scott York, targeted for his grandfather’s supposed murder of a Black man and his own exploitation of eminent domain to seize Native American land, hires retired police officer Mason Farmer to track down the vigilantes. Things get worse when the group inadvertently kills one of their victims and the man’s brother, the leader of a white supremacist gang known as the Righteous Boys, seeks bloody vengeance. The novel climaxes with a sustained action sequence that brings all these tensions to a head and concludes with an unexpected act of gut-wrenching violence worthy of its hefty themes. Well-rounded, sympathetic characters drive the propulsive narrative, which makes room for thoughtful discussions of such topics as Black identity, racial justice, and reparations. Mayfield’s lucid prose, breakneck pacing, and confident handling of controversial subject matter make him a writer to watch. Agent: Jackson Keeler, InkWorks.

Starred review from January 1, 2024
Following the murder of his teenage cousin Darius, young Black political activist Nate Evers devises what his friend Isiah calls a "crazy-ass reparations scheme." Along with Darius' older brother, Joshua, and their friend Rachel, Nate and Isiah track down descendants of men who committed hate crimes in the South decades ago, abduct them, and teach them a fatal lesson. One of their victims is a man inaptly named Chipper whose forebears lynched a formerly enslaved man who'd been wrongly imprisoned for raping a white woman. Following the disappearance of Chipper, who was known for having torn down a memorial to the hanged man, the avengers are pursued by Chipper's brother, Samuel, "a cross-burner with psychosis" who leads the white supremacist Righteous Boys. Nate and his mates, who gradually begin to differ over their aims and methods, are also pursued by Mason Farmer, a former white Birmingham cop with a racist streak. He went to work for a private investigative firm so he could afford the prescription drugs his wife needed after having been badly traumatized by a gang of "homeboys" who forced her off the road. There's nary a moment in Mayfield's bravura debut that isn't tense and unsettling or lets readers off the hook. Inspired by Black activist Kimberly Jones' fiery video, "How Can We Win?," this politically charged crime novel refuses to settle for easy answers, or easy anger. "We're doing Darius a disservice making this just about terrible white people," Isiah argues. One white character asks Nate, "How can there ever be any meaningful change if it's your people and my people?" He replies, "Race is a complex issue." That complexity has rarely been captured as powerfully or affectingly as it is here. A provocative, page-turning treatment of racism in America.

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February 5, 2024

DEBUT The sight of his young cousin's bruised and battered body on a morgue table has stuck with Joshua and his friends. Racial intolerance fueled the callous act that robbed Darius from friends and family. Two years later, Joshua and his close friends Nate, Isaiah, and Rachel target those who commit hate crimes or benefit from criminal actions against various racial groups. They abduct and interrogate their targets, forcing them to make weekly reparation payments to nonprofit groups. Mason Farmer, an investigator whose personal and professional life is in tatters, learns of an extortion plot from a man he knew in the past. As he gleans new leads, the vigilantes continue to pick new quarry. However, a rift begins to develop among the quartet and ideologies are challenged. An accidental death results in unforeseen dangers for Joshua and his inner circle, along with the possibility of being apprehended by Mason. VERDICT In this story with an impassioned plotline and an assortment of complex characters, Mayfield approaches an often controversial subject with nuance, ushering in an array of perspectives from his dramatis personae. A brilliant debut from a promising talent.--Philip Zozzaro

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