Dirty South

Many authors incorporate music into their books; fewer can write with the rhythms and poetry of music itself. Ace Atkins proves with Dirty South he is one of the latter. His latest book reads like a blues song brought to life. Moving to a lush, languid beat, it is a raw but fluid journey through the streets of New Orleans and the often troubled lives of his characters. Of all the day jobs amateur detectives pursue, Nick Travers has perhaps the coolest of all: blues tracker. A former football player now a college professor, Travers spends his time tracking down the dying legends of the blues and recording their artists' stories as part of an oral history project. All Nick is trying to do this time is help an old teammate who's in some serious money trouble, but he finds himself up to his ankles in alligators, fighting to save both himself and his friend. Atkins has increased the energy of his plotting in Dirty South, taking Travers on a thrill ride through the ghettos of the Big Easy to the bayous of rural Louisiana. This is a trip you'll want to take.

Dirty South starts out with the premise "What would you do if you only had twenty-four hours to save the life of a friend?" That's the rap teaser. Rhythm and blues takes its time, and unlike rap, it sings about real things. As fictional blues legend JoJo says, "Rap doesn't elevate us...Money, money, money. Trashy women. That's not music. Glorifies people being ignorant. Blues is music." Tell it to fifteen-year-old rapper named Alias, who started life abandoned by his mother, a drug addict and prostitute and got a dose of reality when his friends conned him. When you come from nothing, become a millionaire with a lakefront mansion in your teens, then have respect, women, money, song and fame yanked away from you because of cross-town rivals, you sing the why-me blues. JoJo and Ace Atkins's hero, Nick Travers, aren't listening. The old man, who sits nightly drinking beer on his porch with his wife Loretta, waxes cautionary about rap: "That music is against God. Makes thugs into heroes, women into things, and money above all." This is not just a mystery. Atkins makes this novel about rap sound like a 1930's blues song mourning popular culture, yet acknowledging its siren's smile of groups such as Alias that lures children, rappers and the rap culture are elevated into understanding as opposed to glorification. This mystery sings truth to power.

"'Kids will listen to anything these days. Man, when I was a kid, we all wanted to be Muddy Waters. The way he sang about women and whiskey. Made me want to play that ole blues.'" "'Not much has changed,' I said." "'Except plenty," he said. "That music is against God. Makes thugs into heroes, women into things, and money above all.'" (Page 119) Nick Travers's old friend JoJo doesn't think much of rap music. Neither does Nick but that doesn't stop him from helping his friend and ex New Orleans Saints football teammate Teddy Paris. Teddy has a major problem and will be dead within twenty-four hours if Nick doesn't help. Nick has a history of being able to find things and in this fourth novel (Crossroad Blues, Leavin' Trunk Blues, Dark End of the Street) of the series; he may have finally used up all of his luck. Teddy Paris has a rap star prodigy working for his label, Ninth Ward Records. As the age of 16, the young star goes by the name of ALIAS. While he might be street wise, he was set up and conned out of more than $700,000. With his company already on the edge of financial collapse, Teddy needs that money back to pay off a cross-town rival who wants ALIAS and his money making income for himself. Teddy is trying desperately to keep ALIAS out of his competitors clutches for business and personal reasons and is also trying to stay alive as the rival has threatened death if he doesn't get his money. So, Teddy needs Nick, who has a few ideas to find and recover the missing money. Nick has done this sort of thing before by tracking down missing royalty money for some of the old blues singers and this is fairly close to doing that. But normally, he hasn't had this kind of deadline and with no one else to help, Nick never thinks twice but jumps into the mess with both feet. There isn't anything he won't do to help his former teammate and his immediate goal is to buy a little time. He starts looking for the players who took the money along with the reluctant ALIAS. Before long, as secrets are exposed, the trail twists and turns in violent and unexpected ways with the hunters becoming the hunted before a final violent confrontation in speedboats out on Lake Pontchartrain. As always, Ace Atkins spins a dark tale of greed and murder in and around New Orleans and the Deep South. Unlike James Lee Burke who has written about the same areas, Ace Atkins never sways the reader's focus away from the ugliness by pretty prose concerning flowers, the skies above, or the muddy waters. One isn't given a respite in Atkins' books, as once he draws you into the muck and mire of the human soul, he does not let you go before the last dark page. The world Nick Travers inhabits while rooted firmly in the present constantly reminds one of the past especially in regards to the music of the blues. Throughout the series, the blues has been a constant companion, if not a character into its own right, and that is true in this novel as well. Through well placed snippets of i

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.

"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.