[.ca] Dirty South (ISBN 0060004630)

Unquestionably Atkins's Best Novel to Date:
Recently, a gentleman at a major record company played his weekend's voice mail recordings for me. The messages were all from erstwhile rappers, all in rhyme, and had the common theme of "give me a deal." Most of them did not even leave contact information, and some of them exhibited an undercurrent of desperation. While not all rappers come from impoverished or humble beginnings, certainly many of them do. The music provides them with the promise and, more often than not, the illusion of a way out of their circumstances. Music has been one of the primary themes of all the novels of Ace Atkins. His creation of Nick Travers as a blues scholar and occasional rumpled knight is somewhat unique. While the previous Travers novels have been primarily concerned with blues and soul music, DIRTY SOUTH, Atkins's latest offering, concerns the rap/hip hop industry. DIRTY SOUTH, in keeping with the subject matter of the music, is much grittier and darker than his previous work. It is also unquestionably his best to date. Nick is reluctantly dragged into the hip-hop scene by Teddy Paris, a former teammate of his on the New Orleans Saints professional football team. Teddy and his brother Malcolm are living large as the heads of Ninth Ward Records, a wildly successful New Orleans rap label named after the somewhat notorious Crescent City neighborhood (referred to locally as "The lower Nine -- where they don' mind dyin'"). Teddy is in a huge jam. His latest star, a fifteen-year-old rapper named ALIAS who has grown up quickly and hard, has been scammed out of $500,000 in Ninth Ward Records money by a team of operators that nobody seems able to locate. Teddy, desperate for money, borrows a half-million dollars from a local hard-case named Cash. The loan, and an extra $200,000 for "interest and time," comes due in 24 hours. Nick begins beating the rough bushes of New Orleans to discover who the scam artists are, and where the money is, looking for any information that will lead to the recovery of the money and the rescue of his friend. Cash, meanwhile, is quite clear that he is not as interested in recovering his money as he is in taking over ALIAS's career. When violence begins to strike closer to home, Nick moves ALIAS to the Mississippi Delta where Nick's friends, living blues legend JoJo Johnson and his wife Loretta, have resided since the events in DARK END OF THE STREET. But duplicity, violence and double-crosses dog Nick's efforts every step of the way right up to the book's surprising and cataclysmic conclusion. Atkins's writing in DIRTY SOUTH fulfills the promise made in his previous three novels. His description of New Orleans' Calliope housing project, for example, reads like a travelogue through hell. Atkins also makes a subtle, pointed and dead-on accurate comparison between the rural and urban blues music of the past and the rap music of the present. Sex and violence in music is certainly nothing new, and both are plentiful here. DIRTY SOUTH is Atkins's best novel to date. We hope this critically acclaimed talent becomes a household literary name. Highly recommended. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Atkins is the real deal.:
Since retiring from professional football, former New Orleans Saint Nick Travers has divided his time between teaching blues history at Tulane University, researching an oral history of the blues, and performing favors for friends in trouble, favors which usually place him in grave danger. In this, the fourth book in the series, amateur PI Travers is approached by ex-teammate turned record producer Teddy Paris, and asked to find a con artist who bilked the up and coming young rap star known as ALIAS out of several hundred thousand dollars. Travers proceeds to do what he does best, asking questions that eventually provoke violent responses. His pursuit of the truth leads him to the dark heart of New Orleans, where he witnesses some sad extremes of human behavior from friends and enemies alike. Reader's reactions to Dirty South may depend on whether they've read previous adventures. For those familiar with the series, the current installment may feel like a holding action, wherein Atkins takes stock and engages in some extended character development, positioning his cast for future stories. For those new to the series, the book might be perceived as a curious hybrid of a Robert B. Parker and a James Burke novel, if only in subject matter and themes. In either case, readers will find themselves in the hands of an accomplished stylist, one whose straightforward, understated prose will transport them from their own milieus to that of modern day New Orleans. They'll also pick up some interesting tidbits about Travers' beloved blues music in the bargain.

Atkins at his best in Dirty South:
Ms. Klausner, I mean you no offense, but's it's obvious you did not read this book. If you had, you would been pulled along by one helluva story, an ending that catches the reader off-guard and yet makes absolute sense, and some of the best, most lyrical writing I've read in a long time. Ace Atkins' previous novels are all good, solid thrillers (Dark End my favorite of the previous three) that combine realistic Southern settings and historical accuracy with driving plots. Dirty South surpasses all three -- by far. Atkins' four books are all set against a backdrop of 20th Century African American music and history. Crossroad Blues began in the Delta with Robert Johnson; Leavin Trunk took us via the Great Migration to the electric blues of Chicago in the early 50s; and Dark End was saturated in the Memphis soul of the late 60s. The next logical step in the progression of Southern black music is Dirty South rap out of New Orleans. Through it all, Nick Travers is a white man in a black world, at once accepted and separate. But music -- and Atkins' knowledge of it -- never distracts the reader or slows down the narrative in Dirty South. It's the ghost that drives the story, allowing Atkins to do what he does best -- spin a tale full of friendship and betrayal, loyalty and treachery, honor and obligation, integrity and corruption. In Dirty South, Atkins particularly shines with the chapters written in ALIAS's voice in a second-person narrative. He inhabits the young rapper's skin in some truly gorgeous passages that roll around in your head like poetry days later. Don't be like Ms. Klausner -- read this book. I've already been through it twice -- once in a headlong rush to find out what happens, once to savor its impact. You'll love it.

Ace Atkins just gets better and better:
"Dirty South" is the fourth novel in Ace Atkins' Nick Travers series, and each book just gets better. The title refers to a style of rap that's become popular in the southeast. It's the most popular music in New Orleans right now, so it comes as no surprise that Nick Travers, a blues tracker, would become involved with the music and its practitioners. Nick has traveled a long, hard road. A difficult childhood led to a truncated career with the New Orleans Saints, and eventually to a professorship at Tulane University teaching the blues. On the side, he's a blues tracker - finding, researching and investigating the history and the people of the music. Over the years, Nick's skills have allowed him to help several of his friends out of some pretty tight spots. "Dirty South" is no different. Nick's old friend from his football days, Teddy Paris, is in a world of hurt. He's a music entrepreneur and has got himself into a mess with another producer to whom he owes money. If Teddy can't come up with several hundred thousand dollars in 24 hours, he'll be killed. The other producer, Cash, also wants to take Teddy's new protégé, a teenage rapper named ALIAS, away from him. It turns out that the money belonged to ALIAS, and someone has run a con on him. Nick starts looking for answers, but the answers only lead to more difficult questions. Teddy's brother Malcolm, his lawyer Terry Brill, the producer Cash, and even ALIAS himself have less than pure motives. As it turns out, saving Teddy's life is just the beginning. Nick is pulled into a dark world of love and betrayal that stretches back a decade, to the beginning of dirty South music. Ultimately, "Dirty South", like all of Ace Atkins' work, focuses on the meaning of friendship. To Nick Travers, who has no biological family, his chosen family of friends is of paramount importance. He'll do anything for them. So the question becomes, who's betraying whom, and for what? There are no easy answers. To accompany Nick on his search for the truth is an exciting and thought provoking journey.

A former literary snob converted by an Ace of a Writer!:
Full disclosure: I've only read a couple of crime novels, the last one around '99 because I was told an English Bulldog played a prominent role in "The Last Good Kiss." Before that, my prior crime novel was read in high school when assigned "The Thin Man" for class. More full disclosure: I've met Ace Atkins, bought "Dirty South," and am now celebrating my liberation from the world of pencil-necked academics who are scandalized by plots and carefully heroic character development. "Dirty South" is commendable for its twists and action, but more is to be commended in the author's minimalism, nuanced description, characters and observation. An intelligent reader will understand that Nick Travers' POV is, like the rest of humanity, limited. Ace Atkins steps around the necessarily limited singular point of view by cleverly crafting scenes in minds of other characters. Appropriately, all characters' memories and perceptions of similar events are interpreted differently. The author's strategy is also well-paced. Few novelists are able to create subplots within the text and manage the strings so successfully. Readers who might need to pause for breath after a high note will settle into pleasures of descriptions of New Orleans, blues music and Nick's complicated relationship with his girlfriend. The reader can almost hear the riffs of a Muddy Waters song in rolling passages, an indication of prose excellence. Ace Atkins also made another strong decision within the work: while Nick Travers is the "good guy," he is not super-human. An excellent choice on the author's part to underscore the character's temptation by an attractive woman, his frustrations in trying to trust people around him, his confusion with regard as to whom he can trust. Nick Travers is not an "everyman's man" with his extensive knowledge of blues music and sheer athleticism, but the character is an exceptional man. Just the sort of guy to whom people would turn in life to help with their problems. And just the sort of guy an intelligent novelist spends time to craft carefully. Word of praise for Atkins' treatment of animals: in an era where animals are props in the landscape, Nick Travers' world brings more than cutsie dogs to the forefront. Rather, the issue of widespread animal neglect and abuse is addressed early and often, with the prose describing race relations, in part, as symptomatic of general thoughtlessness and cruelty by humans. It is a rare author who understands that compassion does not pour from a finite vein. Word of warning to afore-mentioned academics: You will find no self-pity, no excoriation of violence or male brutality in long textual passages. You will not find overly-sensitive fathers who strap babies in slings across their chests whilst they cook dinner for their wives, their mothers-in-law and write checks to their therapists after spending long hours trying to understand why their mothers didn't love them. What you WILL find are true-to-life men, most with warts, many with politically incorrect views, all with honest dialogue. What you will find are true-to-life characters in which good and bad men exist in all colors. Nick Travers' job, like each person's, is figuring out what skin color hides. I'm a believer. And making some room on the bookshelf for finely-written crime novels from authors such as Ace Atkins. (Although Ace's "Dirty South" is some of the finest, most honest and least victim-pandering novels I've read, I am waiting to assign five stars to his crime novel featuring an English Bulldog.)