Dark End of the Street

By Ace Atkins

For a former football pro turned professor it looked like a simple trip to find his friend’s long lost soul singer brother . But nothing is ever as simple as it looks when you arrive at the Dark End of the Street. Elmore Leonard: “Ace Atkins is an ace of a writer.”

The plan is simple. A favor, 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.

Author: Ace Atkins
Format: ebook
Release Date: 08 Oct 2002
Pages: None
ISBN: 978-0-06-052609-2
Ace Atkins, an Alabama native, earned nominations for the Pulitzer Prize and the Livingston Award for his work covering crime at the Tampa Tribune. He now lives on a century-old farm outside Oxford, Mississippi, with his faithful mutts Elvis and Polk Salad Annie. And yes, Ace is his real name.

'Dark End of the Street is really good. Ace Atkins can write.'Robert B. Parker -

'Ace Atkins is an ace of a writer.'Elmore Leonard -

'Toe-tapping good fun.'Booklist -

'Ace Atkins is the real deal, a writer of exceptional talent with a razor-sharp eye for detail and an intimate knowledge of gritty street life. In Dark End of the Street his characters are so tangy and richly succulent, his story so tense and suspenseful, you’ll have to restrain yourself from slurping it down in a single rush.'James W. Hall -