The Nature of Things

And now for something completely different. At least different from all the literary fiction I've been reading lately.  No one could accuse Ace Atkins of writing literary fiction, but his books are well-written and are fast-paced reads. The Innocents , the latest in his Mississippi noir series featuring ex-Army Ranger Quinn Colson, is no exception. I enjoy reading this series, first because it is well-written and carefully plotted, but also because I know from my childhood growing up in the area that Atkins writes about that he's got the place just right. The cadences of speech, the interactions between people, the insularity of that society, Atkins, who still lives in Oxford, Mississippi, understands it all and he writes about it with clear-eyed vision while retaining his empathy for his characters who live in this hidebound place. Which is all probably just a long way of saying that Atkins' characters are believable, and that is some of the highest praise you can give a w...

The Redeemers by Ace Atkins My rating: 2 of 5 stars In Ace Atkins' fictional county of Tibbehah in North Mississippi, Quinn Colson, the ex-Army ranger, has just lost his re-election as sheriff. The corrupt money in town had backed his opponent, an insurance salesman, and that won the day for the man.  In Colson's last few days in office, he is still trying to find a way to bring down his main nemesis and the purveyor of corruption, Johnny Stagg. Stagg is well-entrenched in the halls of power in the county and the state and putting him behind bars will not be easy. Colson is aided in his quest by his estimable assistant, Lillie Virgil. Lillie is one of the few - maybe the only - truly virtuous characters in this southern noir suspense novel. Most of the characters, including the sheriff who is carrying on an illicit affair with his former high school sweetheart, are flawed in the extreme. As the novel begins, Quinn and Lillie are in Memphis waiting outside a house of ill repute...

The Forsaken by Ace Atkins My rating: 4 of 5 stars Continuing with the Mississippi theme in my summer reading, I turned to Ace Atkins' Southern noir series featuring former Army Ranger, now county sheriff, Quinn Colson. Colson is the sheriff of fictional Tibbehah County in Northeast Mississippi, a place somewhere near Tupelo, birthplace of King Elvis. He heads a seven person police force, aided by his chief deputy, Lillie Virgil. From the county seat of Jericho, they do battle with the forces of evil in Tibbehah County, which seems to be a hotbed of sin and moral turpitude, not to mention political corruption. Jericho and Tibbehah County are still recovering from a recent killer tornado that came close to leveling the town, but progress is being made, and, in some cases, the new Jericho being built is a great improvement over the old destroyed town. Much of that improvement has come through the efforts of Johnny Stagg, District Supervisor and local businessman and, not incidentall...

The Broken Places by Ace Atkins My rating: 4 of 5 stars It begins with a prison break. Three inmates from Mississippi's notorious Parchman Prison manage to abscond from the place. One in a big truck goes through the gates, while two others escape on horseback. The two on horseback cut their way through the wire fence around the prison farm and manage to find a car to steal. Then they are on their way to North Mississippi, Tibbehah County and the little town of Jericho, where they plan to confront the man who they believe has the money from an armored truck robbery they pulled off before they were caught and sent to prison. Meanwhile, in Jericho, Quinn Colson, the veteran of the war in Afghanistan who returned to his home town and was elected sheriff, is, one year later, still adjusting to his new life after several years as an Army Ranger. His latest challenge is an ex-con named Jamey Dixon who was convicted several years before of killing a local woman. He had made use of his tim...

I've been spending a lot of time in Mississippi lately. Last week it was Yoknapatawpha County with William Faulkner's  Absalom, Absalom! . This week I've been in Tibbehah County with Ace Atkins' Quinn Colson. It turns out that the two counties have a lot in common and the main thing they have in common is secrets. Secrets that can wreck lives, destroy families, and sometimes get you killed. The thing is, the "secrets" are often known by everybody in the county! We met Quinn Colson in Atkins' previous book,  The Ranger . He was an army ranger, fresh out of serving in Afghanistan and he had driven over from Fort Benning to attend his uncle's funeral. His uncle had been the sheriff of Tibbehah County and, in this entry, Quinn has followed in his footsteps, being elected sheriff in a special election to fill the post. He has swept the sheriff's department clean, firing most of the staff who had been involved in some corrupt practices. But Lillie Virgil...

Ace Atkins (Surely that isn't his real name!) is a writer that I had never heard of until recently when I read about this book in Bookmarks magazine , even though he's been on the scene for several years now, long enough to publish nine books. I was intrigued by the description of the book which described its setting as the "corrupt hill country" of Mississippi. Having grown up in that hill country in the northeastern corner of the state, I knew I had to read that book. Then, on a trip to Murder by the Book, my favorite indie bookstore, last week, I found the book on the table at the entry, so I paid the price and took it home with me. I'm not disappointed that I did. This book was the beginning of a new series by Atkins featuring an Army Ranger named Quinn Colson. We meet Colson as he's on his way to his home county of Tibbehah, a fictional county not unlike Yoknapatawpha, from Fort Benning, Georgia. He's headed back for the funeral of his uncle. He's...