High Praise for Ace Atkin’s newest in San Francisco Chronicle Review

Starting with the novel White Shadow, Oxonian (or, really, Parisian) novelist Ace Atkins moved from writing series-detective mystery to writing crime novels based on serious research that Ace thoroughly assimilated and turned into fine, dark fiction.  The reality he is able to create in these books is tangible, and must have been partly the product of advantages gained in his newspaper beat reporting before he began writing fiction. He also had a knack for picking fascinating underworlds for settings– Tampa in White Shadow, and Phenix City Alabama in Wicked City, both set in the fifties.

For his latest, Devil’s Garden, he’s turned to San Francisco in the twenties and the notorious murder trials of silent screen star Fatty Arbuckle, who was tried three times for murder after a prostitute died at a party he was hosting.  In addition to San Francisco, this gives Atkins three great characters as a subject:  Arbuckle, William Randolph Heart, whose papers convicted Arbuckle in advance, and Sam (better known as Dashiell) Hammett, a Pinkerton detective absorbing subject matter for his own launch into crime fiction.  An AP review of the new one says it’s a peer to the other two:

Atkins’ book, “Devil’s Garden,” is a worthy successor, a remarkable book that succeeds on every level.

As a riveting detective story, it is great entertainment. As a historical novel, it transports the reader to a different time and place, as in this passage about the San Francisco waterfront at night:

“Men boiled crabs on the street. Big wheels of cheese and fresh fruit were displayed from market windows, long, dried sausages and peppers. There were dope pushers with dark-ringed eyes and prostitutes with sagging stockings. Sam smoked and caught all of them, starting up the night like the first strings of a symphony.”

That is not a solitary passage cherry-picked to impress. Atkins’ prose, at once muscular and lyrical, is that good from the first sentence to the last.