photograph by terrance raper / unsplash
With a new Memphis-set thriller, Don’t Let the Devil Ride, Oxford-based bestselling author Ace Atkins has released his thirtieth novel. Though hitting that milestone is no mean feat in an industry that routinely chews up writers and spits them out, Atkins remains humble about his career. “That’s my job,” he tells me over the phone. “You just have to show up to work each day.”
And work, he clearly does. The writer has published 11 books in his popular Quinn Colson series, a fistful of true crime novels, ten books in the Spenser series for the Robert B. Parker estate, and, of course, his newest novel, Don’t Let the Devil Ride. In it, Atkins puts his characters through their paces with the consummate skill of a veteran craftsman. Don’t Let the Devil Ride is a page-turner, a mean machine with a fine-tuned engine that revs from gentle purr to rumbling roar with the slightest touch of the pedal. Atkins doesn’t waste a word as he deftly maneuvers his cast of characters through a multitude of Memphis locations and the occasional London hotel.
The Way to Writing
photograph by billy dabney
Ace Atkins
Ace Atkins wanted to be a writer even before he knew that was an actual job. “From a very early age,” he says, “I was crazy about books, devouring books.”
He worked in a used bookstore for a time, and after graduating from Auburn University, began part-time work for what was then the St. Petersburg Times. Before long, Atkins found himself working as a journalist, a job he held for a long time, and one which often found him on the crime beat.
“It was a terrific experience,” he says. “I worked with a team of fantastic editors and people who had been [writing and editing] for decades, and I learned so much from those people.” Atkins says the experience helped him take the leap from a book fan to a full-time writer. “It was like boot camp,” he laughs.
Memphis has been a recurring setting in his books for the last decade. “It’s such a fantastic place,” Atkins says. “It’s such an interesting place, endlessly fascinating to me, that I knew I wanted to write a book that was all about Memphis.”
The experience of regularly producing copy and meeting deadlines, as well as his experience on the crime beat, helped push him toward crafting crime novels. But it wasn’t just his time as a reporter. “I liked deep Americana stuff,” Atkins explains. “That was my touchstone in writing, and I think that’s ultimately how I ended up writing a lot of crime fiction, because it’s such, in a certain way, a very American style.”
Atkins also talks about the importance of humor and emotional depth in writing, and it shows. Don’t Let the Devil Ride is alternately hilarious and heart-wrenching. Though the plot is propulsive, there’s room for the characters to feel and process big emotions. After all, connection is at the core of any art form, and it would cheapen the experience to deny the human element of a story. Atkins writes thrillers, but he is after more than just thrills.
“It’s not about the crime,” he says. “It’s not about the murder. It’s really a way of examining society.”
“An All-Memphis Novel”
Atkins thinks of himself as a Southern writer, he says. With the exception of his work for the Robert B. Parker estate, everything he’s written has been set in the South and has been rooted in a kind of Southern grittiness. Knowing that, it can hardly come as a surprise that he eventually wanted to set a novel in the Bluff City.
“I knew I wanted to write an all-Memphis novel,” Atkins says. He’s been writing about Memphis, in various forms, since the beginning of his career. Even his first novel, Crossroad Blues (1998), included Memphis moments, and Memphis has been a recurring setting in his books for the last decade. “It’s such a fantastic place,” he says. “It’s such an interesting place, endlessly fascinating to me, that I knew I wanted to write a book that was all about Memphis.”
Those aren’t the words of a tourist, either. Atkins jokes that Memphis is the capital of North Mississippi, and he admits that some of his friends call him an evangelist for this city, where he spends a fair amount of time. “I can be in downtown Memphis in less than an hour,” the writer says. “I’m in Memphis once or twice a week.” His familiarity with the city is evident on the pages of Don’t Let the Devil Ride, which neatly sidesteps the “blues, Beale Street, Boss Crump, and barbecue” references that pepper the copy of less-seasoned writers. Atkins references specific stores, streets, local personalities, soul singers, restaurants, and “wrasslers” that make it clear he knows of which he speaks.
“Every time people talk bad about Memphis, they’re always people who don’t have a cultural appreciation for what Memphis stands for.” — Ace Atkins
Despite his familiarity with the city — and true to his reportorial roots — Atkins did his research as well. He says Novel bookstore’s Kat Leache helped him connect with people to make sure his characters were as accurate as possible. “She really helped put me in touch with the right people to get those details right,” the writer says. That attention to detail has helped Atkins get into the most apt frame of mind for each of his characters. It has also helped him to form his own opinions about the city.
“Every time people talk bad about Memphis,” Atkins says, “they’re always people who don’t have a cultural appreciation for what Memphis stands for.” People from outside the United States tend to have a strong appreciation of Memphis, he says. “It’s almost a mythical place to some people. … Everything I can think of that is deeply American is situated in, if not coming out of, Memphis.”
Devil Ride
Atkins’ newest novel is about perspectives: how infrequently expectations line up with reality, and the violence that sometimes stems from misaligned perspectives. It’s a novel of Memphis, but it’s also about what happens when outside influences come to town, and what Memphis means to the rest of the world. And as such, it’s a story about worlds colliding.
In the novel, Addison McKellar’s life comes crashing to a screeching halt when she learns that her husband probably isn’t the hard-working business owner and family man he makes himself out to be. Addison knows there’s a distance between her and her husband, a coldness and remove to their romance, but she had no idea how deep the deception could go, at least not until her husband goes missing for more than a week. That’s when her father introduces her to an old friend of his, legendary PI Porter Hayes.
Addison’s Memphis is a very different city than Porter Hayes’ Memphis. Addison is white, wealthy, and several decades Hayes’ junior, where Hayes is Black and, though certainly living comfortably, not as fabulously wealthy as Addison. Atkins uses a diverse and expansive cast of characters to examine Memphis through different sets of eyes. These characters move in different social circles, giving the reader a mosaic view of Memphis, made up of smaller facets seen from a dozen different angles.
Porter Hayes, Hometown Hero
“Could Porter Hayes exist anywhere else?” quips Hayes’ friend Sawyer, an investigative journalist who made the leap from The Commercial Appeal to The Washington Post on the merits of a big case he and Hayes worked together in ’93.
Though Sawyer offers up the question as a joke, it’s a question the novel takes seriously. Could Porter Hayes exist anywhere but Memphis? That’s a question left to the reader to decide, but to this reader, Hayes certainly feels at home in the Bluff City.
Oddly enough, it was Atkins’ work on the Spenser novels for the Robert B. Parker estate that helped spark the idea for Don’t Let the Devil Ride. Atkins remembers that the name “Spenser” worked like a magic password when he was in Boston researching for a Parker project. “He’s an iconic hero to the people of Boston,” Atkins says of Spenser. “I kept on thinking about wanting to do the same thing for Memphis.”
Hayes keeps his cool under pressure, has connections to people all over town in all different social circles and lines of work. He’s quick with a comeback, and he’s a hard worker. He doesn’t seem like a character who would be out of place in a Memphis barbecue spot or record store.
With Hayes, Atkins wants to give Memphis a gift, a character who represents “what the city is all about.” As for this reader, he hopes we’ve not seen the last of Porter Hayes.
