Ace Atkins returns with more murder & mayhem: What to expect in his new Memphis-set novel
If anatomy is destiny, as Sigmund Freud once postulated, what does a person's name portend?
Take the case of Ace Atkins. That's a moniker made-to-order for crime fiction, with a rat-a-tat terseness appropriate for a two-fisted detective hero. Think Sam Spade, Mike Hammer, John Shaft.
In earlier novels, Atkins introduced two such heroes, each with a similarly trisyllabic if perhaps less zippy name than his own.
One is Nick Travers, an ex-gridiron star turned New Orleans gumshoe. The other is Quinn Colson, an Army ranger turned Mississippi sheriff.
Now, Atkins has a third, with a distinctively Memphis moniker. He's seventysomething sleuth Porter Hayes, named by Atkins in homage to the indelible Stax songwriting team of David Porter and Isaac Hayes.
Due June 25 from HarperCollins/William Morrow, Hayes' debut adventure is titled "Don't Let the Devil Ride," and it may be thicker with Memphis minutiae than anything that's come off a printing press since that special 2019 edition of The Commercial Appeal that celebrated the city's bicentennial.
The first two chapters alone contain references to Sam the Sham, The Commercial Appeal, Orange Mound, Germantown, 201 Poplar, Presbyterian Day School, Jerry "The King" Lawler, Ernest Withers, the Cotton Carnival, the Botanic Garden, and the "Ben & Jerry's by Whole Foods," to name a few.
"Porter Hayes to me is to Memphis what Sam Spade is to San Francisco and Marlowe is to Los Angeles and Spenser is to Boston," said Atkins, in a recent interview, citing the city-specific literary private eyes created by master writers Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker (whose "Spenser" novels Atkins continued after the author's 2010 death). "So he's been rattling around in my brain for a long time."
Atkins calls Memphis his "home city." He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and mother and two sons, but he crosses the state line into Tennessee probably more often than many residents of such nearer municipalities as Southaven.
"I'm in Memphis all the time," said Atkins, who has written about Memphis before (2002's "Dark End of the Street" takes its name from a classic Goldwax soul record, while 2010's "Infamous" recounts the career of Bluff City gangster "Machine Gun" Kelly), but never with such Memphicentric focus. "Oxford is my home town but Memphis is my home city, that's the way I feel about it."
'Charade' in Memphis
A wry thriller that alternates punches and punch lines in the manner of Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen and HBO's "Barry," "Don't Let the Devil Ride" is Atkins' 31st novel since 1998 and another chapter in the increasingly high profile of the former football star and newspaper reporter ("Ace Atkins" being a nice handle for those jobs, too).
The book's blurb-contributing champions include such star crime-writer colleagues as S.A. Cosby, who calls the novel "an instant Southern noir classic," and Don Winslow, who cites its "cracking wit and whip-smart storytelling." In addition, it's already being developed as a possible limited series by HBO. (Atkins hopes the experience will be more satisfying than was "Spenser Confidential," starring Mark Wahlberg, a Netflix production based on a 2013 Atkins novel. Atkins calls the movie "terrible.")
Atkins cites a surprisingly glossy source for his new Memphis novel, with its spatters of blood and barbecue sauce.
“The whole genesis was to do ‘Charade’ in Memphis,” he said, referencing the Paris-set 1963 romantic comedy-thriller directed by "Singin' in the Rain" auteur Stanley Donen. “Something with a comedic touch that also had darkness and a Hitchcockian aspect.”
The "Charade" mention is typical of Atkins, who was "obsessed with movies" as a youngster and remains an enthusiastic cinephile. But in place of that film's acmes of elegance, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, Atkins gives us Hayes, an unpretentious Black private detective who knows where all the Memphis bodies are buried, and Addison McKellar, a privileged — and betrayed — white Central Gardens housewife whose wine-swilling habits are appropriate to the story's corkscrew plot.
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The novel's large, disreputable supporting cast includes a one-handed assassin (as in "Charade"), a crooked evangelical, a Russian "barbarian," and an aging English actress, relocated to Memphis to exploit her fame as a former Elvis leading lady. (The character is loosely based on the late Suzanna Leigh, the "Paradise, Hawaiian Style" star who did just that.)
Atkins said the book showcases "different pockets of Memphis, everything from Central Gardens to Orange Mound, and even mundane places, like Oak Court Mall." The story takes place in 2010, he said, “so it’s nice to be able to bring back places I thought would have been around forever but now are gone, like the Gay Hawk (a soul food restaurant) and the Bon Ton (a Downtown cafe).”
From gridiron to newsroom to bookstore
A true son of the South, Atkins was born in Troy, Alabama. His given name is William Atkins Jr., but "I've never been called anything but 'Ace.'"
"Ace" was his father's name, too. Atkins' dad — the first William "Ace" Atkins — was a professional football player and coach whose job took the family to Buffalo, San Francisco, St. Louis and Detroit. Until the family settled in Alabama, after dad became head coach at Troy State, "It was kind of like being in a military family," Atkins said.
A communications major, Atkins played football at Auburn University for two years. A pass-rush specialist, he landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1993, when Auburn went 11-0.
“I played in a lot of big games," said Atkins (still more or less in football fighting trim, at 6-3 and 250 pounds). "I had a very good time, it was a good experience, but that’s not me, that’s not my identity. The night of the senior banquet in Birmingham, 1993, I knew I was done with football. The next morning I drove straight to Memphis."
A soul music fanatic, “I knew I wanted to see Stax Records. And you know what I found when I got there — a damn vacant lot." (This was after the original Stax studio was razed in 1989, and a decade before the Stax Museum of American Soul Music was built on the site.) "So I took some bricks, some old linoleum. For a music person, it was very depressing.”
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His depression lifted, however, when by happenstance he encountered the Beale Street Christmas parade — and discovered that the grand marshal was the great Stax recording artist and “Crown Prince of Dance,” Rufus Thomas. “I didn’t even know Rufus Thomas was alive," Atkins said. "At that point, I knew I wanted to write about Memphis.”
First, Atkins wrote about real-life crime, as a reporter — potentially, a good stop for any would-be novelist, from Hemingway to Hiaasen. Atkins' first full-time job was with The Tampa Tribune, where the colorful and lurid crime beat offered plenty of inspiration. "I would write the books on my weekends," he said. "I'd sit in my studio apartment, and write."
Unfortunately, “the culture of the newsroom was changing drastically," he said. "The old newsroom of the first five years of my career was starting to be eroded, and lot of the fun was leaching out. It was the dying time of that newsroom. The layoffs started shortly after that.”
The Tampa Tribune ceased publication in 2016, but Atkins had left the business long before, devoting himself full-time to his novels in 2001. The rest, as they say, is history — or, at least the type of history recorded on such websites as "CrimeReads" and "Stop, You're Killing Me!"
In years to come, expect Memphis to continue to be part of that history. Atkins said he plans to bring more clients through the doors of the "Hayes Investigations" office at Second and Madison, so that Porter Hayes — widower, Vietnam veteran and archetypal "good enough man for any world" (per Chandler) — can plunge deeper into the mean streets and maze-like social strata of Memphis.
"There’s a lot of different versions of Memphis, and it just depends what you want to see,” Atkins said. “It can be the refined Memphis or the gritty Memphis. It can be the people who were in the Hi Rhythm Section or the people who went to Washington to take part in January 6. I think it’s one of the most fascinating cities in America.”
Ace Atkins at Novel
Author Ace Atkins in public conversation with journalist and music historian Andria Lisle. Atkins will sign copies of "Don't Let the Devil Ride" ($30, William Morrow), which is dedicated to Lisle.
6 p.m. June 26 at Novel, 387 Perkins Ext.
Line tickets, available with a purchase of the book at Novel, are required to meet the author.
For more information or to order the book, visit novelmemphis.com.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Ace Atkins talks new book, 'Don't Let the Devil Ride,' Memphis & more
