The plan is simple. A favour really. All Nick Travers, a former professional football player turned professor, has to do is drive up Highway 61 from New Orleans to Memphis and track down the lost brother of one of his best friends. But as Travers knows, these simple jobs seldom turn out smoothly. His friend's brother is Clyde James, who, in 1968, was one of the finest soul singers Memphis had to offer. But when James's wife and close friend were murdered, his life was shattered. He turned to the streets, where, decades ago, he disappeared. Travers's search for the singer soon leads him to the casinos in Tunica, Mississippi, and converges with the agenda of the Dixie Mafia, a zealot gubernatorial candidate linked to a neo-Confederacy movement, and an obsessed killer who thinks he has a true spiritual link to the late Elvis Presley. Welcome to Ace Atkins's new South, where you won't find a single southern belle or dripping magnolia. With a precise eye for detail, Atkins takes Travers on a journey into the hidden pockets of New Orleans, the battered roadhouses and truck stops of Mississippi, and the streets of Memphis that only an insider could know.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Ace Atkins is the author of nine novels, including The Ranger, the debut novel in the Quinn Colson series, from G.P. Putnam's Sons. Earlier this year, Atkins was chosen by the Robert B. Parker estate to continue the highly popular Spenser novels.
The first of those books hits bookstores in 2012 along with Atkins' sequel to The Ranger.
A former journalist who cut his teeth as a crime reporter in the newsroom of The Tampa Tribune, he published his first novel, Crossroad Blues, at 27 and became a full-time novelist at 30.
While at the Tribune, Ace earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination for a feature series based on his investigation into a forgotten murder of the 1950s. The story became the core of his critically acclaimed novel, White Shadow, which earned raves from noted authors and critics. In his next novels, Wicked City, Devil's Garden, and Infamous, blended first-hand interviews and original research into police and court records with tightly woven plots and incisive characters. The historical novels told great American stories by weaving fact and fiction into a colorful, seamless tapestry.
The Ranger represents a return to Ace's first love: hero-driven series fiction. Quinn Colson is a real hero--a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan--who returns home to north Mississippi to fight corruption on his home turf. The first Quinn Colson novel, a contemporary book with a dash of classic westerns and noir, hits stores June 9th.
Ace lives on a historic farm outside Oxford, Mississippi with his family.
