{"id":3288,"date":"2023-11-18T21:39:17","date_gmt":"2023-11-18T21:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3288"},"modified":"2024-01-17T22:31:03","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T22:31:03","slug":"smoke-kings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=3288","title":{"rendered":"Smoke Kings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When cousins Joshua and Nate view Joshua\u2019s brother lying in the morgue, having been beaten, they swear that Darius won&#8217;t be \u201cjust another dead black boy.\u201d Two years later, grief has solidified into a plan: Nate, Joshua, and friends Rachel and Isiah have taken Scott York, a white man, captive. They confront him about when his grandfather and three other white men threw a Black man off a bridge to his death. \u201cPawpaw? Impossible,\u201d is the reaction, but the verdict is the same: Scott must each week deposit $311.54 into an account the group provides. They\u2019re enacting a reparations program, and Scott\u2019s nonchalance about the crime and incredulousness that the group would care about the dead man spur them on. Tensions caused by colorism and racial differences\u2014Rachel is Black but often taken for Latina and Isiah is Korean American&#8211;and disagreements about whom to target introduce interesting ambiguities as the audacious plan unfolds and leads to mayhem. Mayfield\u2019s foreword explains that he was inspired by Kimberly Jones\u2019s video<em><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"> <a style=\"color: #3366ff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/gmail.us21.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=fdc4244772426f53bc39aadc9&amp;id=3b9e5a3f59&amp;e=cdf6c093b5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">How Can We Win?<\/a><\/span>.<\/em> Readers can learn more about reparations and the history that makes them necessary by reading Ta-Nehisi Coates\u2019s<span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><em><a style=\"color: #3366ff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/gmail.us21.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=fdc4244772426f53bc39aadc9&amp;id=8f9a2a9620&amp;e=cdf6c093b5\">The Case for Reparations<\/a> <\/em><\/span>and Bryan Stevenson\u2019s (an author and activist who\u2019s mentioned in the book) searing<span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><em> <a style=\"color: #3366ff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/gmail.us21.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=fdc4244772426f53bc39aadc9&amp;id=1462962625&amp;e=cdf6c093b5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Just Mercy<\/a><\/em>. <\/span><strong>A compelling and exciting debut.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When cousins Joshua and Nate view Joshua\u2019s brother lying in the morgue, having been beaten, they swear that Darius won&#8217;t be \u201cjust another dead black boy.\u201d Two years later, grief&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[104,180,55,51],"class_list":["post-3288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-african-american-black","tag-debut","tag-mystery-detective","tag-thrillers"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Smoke-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Smoke.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Henrietta Thornton","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=4"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}