Product Description

What would you do if you only had twenty
four hours to save the life of a friend?

Searching for lost souls and solving problems was never Nick Travers's intention when he started doing favors for his buddies. A former football player who sometimes teaches blues history at Tulane, Nick would rather just watch the Louisiana rain and listen to old Muddy Waters records.

But when music mogul Teddy Paris, a former teammate from the New Orleans Saints, visits Nick and asks him to help find $700,000 taken from a rap prodigy, Nick can't turn down his friend. The missing money will pay a bounty on Paris's head that was set by a crosstown rival, a street-hard thug named Cash.

Nick soon finds himself lost in the world of Gucci-lined Bentleys and endless bottles of Cristal champagne. He sets out with fifteen-year-old rap star, ALIAS, seeking a team of grifters that conned the kid. But uncertainty, the constant threat of violence, and a phantom grave robber haunt their search. When a killer hits too close, Nick takes ALIAS with him to the Mississippi Delta, where he comes under the protection and guidance of Nick's mentor, blues legend JoJo Jackson, and his wife, Loretta.

Soon Nick, JoJo, and another old-school Delta tough guy do battle in the Dirty South rap world where money, sex, and murder threaten to take down Paris's empire and destroy ALIAS. As cultures clash, the story winds its way through the infamous Calliope housing projects, the newly built mansions of New Orleans's lake-front, and ultimately to the brackish muck of the Bayou Savage.

Dirty South is a thrilling tale of friendship, betrayal, revenge, and trust from a fresh and hip new voice. Take a ride to the other side of New Orleans, away from the neon gloss of Bourbon Street, to see what the dirty south is all about.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1117267 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03
• Released on: 2004-03-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This richly atmospheric yet action-starved crime drama is the fourth installment in Atkins's New Orleansâ€"based series featuring Nick Travers, a former professional football player turned amateur sleuth. Here, Travers agrees to help an old football teammate, now a wealthy music mogul, find nearly $1 million conned from one of his record labels' marquee stars, a 15-year-old rapper known only as ALIAS. Travers meets with ALIAS, but the brooding, self-involved punk is either too embarrassed to say how he got swindled or may have something more to protect than just his pride. Prowling the seedy side of New Orleans, Travers rubs up against social extremes - rival record producers, street urchins, old athletes and wealthy agents who make sport of separating entertainment stars from their money. In the process, Travers attracts a long list of enemies, several of whom make it openly known that he'd best butt out if he knows what's good for him. Atkins (Dark End of the Street) writes with the same lean prose and descriptive acumen that earned him praise for earlier efforts. Yet the plot of his latest is thin, sluggish and confusing (exactly who is the corpse-like figure who tries to kill Travers on two separate occasions?). Fans of the Delta blues will appreciate Atkins's inarguably deep musical knowledge - Travers teaches blues history at Tulane in his spare time - yet those looking for a good yarn may find themselves hopelessly tangled by the end.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
In his Nick Travers books, Atkins has demonstrated that writing a mystery is a lot like playing the blues: innovation and virtuosity are less important than the ability to find a comfortable groove. Reading him is like settling into the passenger seat for a curb-crawling drive from the staccato noise of New Orleans, through the slow funk of the swamp, to the dusty twang of the Mississippi Delta. And wiseass Travers, "roots music field researcher" and ex-pro footballer, is just the guy to steer the car and tune the dial on the dashboard radio. Here, Travers' former teammate is now a rap producer who needs big bucks to call off a death threat--and someone just conned his 15-year-old prodigy out of half-a-million bucks. After blues- and soul-related mysteries, this foray into the world of MTV and BET is a logical development. The new guard doesn't know their booming beats and angry rhymes have roots in the past, and Travers has a hard time realizing that rap might just be the blues of a new generation. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
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 teaches at the University of Mississippi and lives on a century-old farm outside Oxford with a half-dozen faithful mutts, including Elvis and Polk Salad Annie. And yes, Ace is his real name.

Customer Reviews

Nick Travers is back in "Dirty South" by Ace Atkins
"'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 information, the author and his signature character remind the reader that the rap of today, in all its forms, was built on the back of the blues.

While JoJo and his wife Loretta and a few select others make another reappearance, one gets the feeling that this every well might be the final Nick Travers mystery. A story arc branching across four novels is complete, some loose ends are tied off and by the end, Nick has finally dealt with old ghosts that have bothered him throughout the series. If this is the end, it was one heck of a ride and great knowing you, Nick.


Book Facts:

Dirty South
By Ace Atkins
www.authortracker.com
William Morrow
2004
ISBN # 0-06-000462-2
Hardback

Kevin R. Tipple © 2004

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

Murder Mystery With the Soul of Blues
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.