SMOKE KINGS
Jahmal Mayfield (jahmalmayfield.com)
Melville House (mhpbooks.com)
£16.99
Buy a copy from your favourite independent bookshop
Following the racially-motivated murder of one of their number, a small group of New Jersey friends decide to take the law into their own hands. But rather than seek revenge on the boys who killed their friend, they settle on the idea of righting historical wrongs: they choose often-low profile cases of violence against Blacks, identify the people who committed the crime – people who usually walked away scot free purely because of the colour of their skin – and find their living relatives. Kidnapping the worst of these, they force them to pay “reparations” into a community fund, or face the same fate to which their ancestors subjected thier Black victims. They manage nine successful jobs before it all goes horribly wrong and they find themselves on the wrong side of the leader of a white supremacist group, and in the sights of an ex-policeman-turned-private-investigator who is more racist than he likes to believe.
Smoke Kings is Jahmal Mayfield’s debut novel and, I’m here to tell you that it’s already a contender for one of the best novels you’ll read this year. It’s a consistently well-written, and extremely engaging novel that deals sensitively with issues such as police brutality against Black people, overt racism and the rise of populist politics and right-wing opinions that haven’t been seen since the days of the Third Reich or America before the Civil Rights movement. For me, Smoke Kings was a solid four-star (out of five) read; but those final two paragraphs. Phew! They will break your heart and immediately elevate this to five-star greatness. They make you reconsider everything that has gone before and review it all in light of what we have just been told. This is a novel that will stick with you long after you’ve read those final two paragraphs, a novel that will open your eyes to the realities of the modern world.
In the tradition of the best noir novels, Smoke Kings follows a fairly well-trodden path; we’ve all read countless novels about the gang who carry off the perfect heist, then things start to fall apart in the aftermath as cracks begin to show in what was previously a tight-knit group of people. Replace the perfect heist with a plan to force the descendants of people who have historically committed atrocities against Black people, and you’re some way towards understanding where Mayfield hopes to go with this. At the centre of the novel is a small group of friends: Joshua and Nate are Black, and are the brother and cousin, respectively, of Darius who was killed two years previous to the beginning of the novel; Isiah is a Korean man adopted by a white family, and engaged to Rachel, mixed race, who easily passes as white and is often told how much she resembles Taylor Swift. What they’re doing they do with the best of intentions. Any “reparations” that are paid into their account are immediately distributed to those Black families who need it most, to help them rebuild their lives in the wake of unspeakable violence. But as they progress through their list, the cracks begin to show. Nate is too gung-ho, too keen to inflict pain on their captives, while Isiah begins to wonder why Black people are more deserving than other minorities, tricking the gang into kidnapping someone whose grandfather oppressed Creek Indians. It is as they’re fighting with each other that they will make the mistake that will bring them to the attention of Samuel, leader of the white supremacist group the Righteous Boys. These central characters are, for the most part, well-drawn and wonderfully realised. Joshua blends into the background around the halfway point, but aside from this, we get a great sense of the other three, and of what drives them.
Interestingly, the two main white characters have something almost cartoonish about them, perhaps in a conscious effort by the author to turn the tables on pre-late-20th century fiction where Black characters were often portrayed as caricatures or heavily stereotyped cardboard cutouts. Mason Farmer, once a member of the Birmingham Police Department, and now working for a private firm knows deep in his heart that he is racist, though he goes to great lengths to prove otherwise, often inadvertently revealing his true opinions to his interlocutor. His daughter has settled down with a Black man and they have a son, Zion, who is a source of endless pain for the policeman. But he uses his grandson’s existence in the classic “I can’t be racist; some of my best friends are Black!” defence. Farmer is extremely tone deaf, and is often left baffled as to how or why he has annoyed someone: the “both sides” argument makes an appearance, as does the cringeworthy scene where he speaks in Spanish to a woman “[who] had shoulder-length black hair, eyes dark as shadows, skin like a milk chocolate candy bar. Not black, though”, who ultimately turns out to be Indian (Farmer’s reaction to this news is both funny and shocking at the same time, the perfect summation of this surprisingly multilayered character: “Indian? I don’t recall anyone in headdress and feathers, so I’d have to say no.”). Where Farmer is a nuanced character, whose racism is often subtle, Samuel is the stereotypical white supremacist: big, muscular, covered in tattoos and not afraid to speak his mind, especially when it comes to his outlook on the world, and the people who inhabit it. Despite the cartoonish portrayal – Samuel finds himself surrounded by inept, bumbling idiots for the most part – he’s a frightening character, not least because we’ve seen his type on television, in countless news stories over the course of the past eight years or so. Mayfield might be playing the Righteous Boys for laughs to a certain degree (though don’t be fooled), but there’s a frightening truth, or realism, behind Samuel and the group that he leads.
Overall, there is much to recommend Smoke Kings, especially to anyone who enjoys well-constructed noir. This is as bleak and engaging as anything James M. Cain or Jim Thompson ever created. It’s a fine companion piece to the novels of S. A. Cosby, and Mayfield deserves the same level of success (if you’ve enjoyed anything by any of these writers, then make sure Smoke Kings makes it on to your TBR). But there’s also an element of horror to this story; not supernatural horror, but the more mundane type of horror that has a tendency to hit home hardest. There’s a certain inevitability to the course of events, and the way Mayfield weaves the different strands into a coherent whole. While we can’t guess the outcome, we can be sure that it won’t end well for some – or perhaps any – of the characters. Like rubberneckers at a car crash, we can’t pull our eyes away from the scenes in front of us and for the 400-page duration, we’re putty in the hands of a master. It’s difficult to accept that this is a first novel, and it leaves us wanting more from this exceptional writer. And, in the end, those last two paragraphs, forty three words, put us through the wringer and leave us with the dread feeling that this is just the beginning of this story and that what happens next is limited only by our own imaginations, our own unconscious biases, microaggressions and outright racist opinions. And like that, he leaves us, wanting more and waiting for his next novel. Don’t miss it.
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