Atkins's richly detailed but scattered sixth novel draws on the history of a real town, Phenix City, Ala., which in 1954 was overrun with gambling, prostitution and moonshine. When Albert Patterson, the state's recently elected attorney general, is gunned down on the street, the town's antivice group vows to bring the murderer to justice. Ex-boxer and family man Lamar Murphy leads the charge, with the rest of the Russell County Betterment Association (RBA) following suit. There are crooked characters at every turn, from the lecherous Deputy Bert Fuller, who personally inspects and "catalogues" the city's prostitutes, to Fannie Belle, a brothel madam with a habit of collecting husbands. Even when the town falls under martial law and Lamar is appointed interim sheriff, the "redneck mafia" will do anything to prevent Phenix City from going straight. Atkins (White Shadow) spares no punches in detailing the town's depravity, but the result is less a coherent story and more a snapshot of a bygone era. Readers will struggle with the many names and shifting alliances, while the climax and resolution are anything but surprising. Author tour. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

A small group of men decide to take on 1954 Phenix City, AL, "The Wickedest City in America," in this latest by the author of the Nick Travers series and White Shadow. Atkins lives in Oxford, MS. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A riveting story about how the triumph of evil is forestalled when good men...do something. Phenix City, Ala., is a real place. In 1955 Look magazine called it "the Wickedest City in America." Atkins, who begins his novel a year earlier, based it on a real case that transformed the town. While sin, in all its familiar variations, had become endemic in Phenix City, one homicide too many was about to change the status quo. Albert Patterson, elected Alabama's attorney general on the promise of clean-up, was gunned down in a Phenix City alley. For a variety of reasons, some obvious, some intangible, the formula that had been unfailingly successful in eradicating reform falls short this time and the Patterson killing has the effect of energizing a smoldering but hitherto silent majority. John Patterson, for instance, has never seen himself as the stuff of heroes, but now his father's martyrdom strips him of choice. " 'I'm taking my father's place,' " he grimly tells his friend Lamar Murphy, and by doing so becomes a source of strength for Murphy--a family man and small-business owner--and those like him, those to whom their stew of a town has made self-respect increasingly difficult. That opposition to Phenix City's mafia is dangerous is a given. Albert's murder was hardly a surprise, but little by little, confirmed in the belief that Edmund Burke had it right about the triumph of evil, citizens do what they must to take their town back. And as Murphy says to a young man whose small act of bravery will strike a telling blow: " 'Feels good, doesn't it?' " Atkins (White Shadow, 2006, etc.) is clearly in love with his colorful characters--on both sides of the moral divide--and makes them wonderfully believable. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In White Shadow (2006), Atkins spun an atmospheric thriller around the real-life murder of a Tampa gangster in 1955. Now he does the same thing with Phenix City, Alabama, another hotbed of 1950s crime. The murder of a crime-busting attorney, Albert Patterson, in 1954 was the catalyst for a group of determined cops, state government officials, and local citizens to stand up against the underworld empire that ruled the city. Atkins, who grew up in  Alabama and whose grandfather had ties to the Phenix City Mob, uses Patterson's murder to frame his fictionalized account of how the city was finally tamed. His hero is a gas-station owner turned interim sheriff, who plays the Gary Cooper role here the ordinary man forced to stand up to corruption. The novel is at its best in setting the scene neon temptation on the streets of small-town Alabama but Atkins is so committed to historical accuracy that he occasionally sacrifices the narrative pulse in service to backstory. Still, like Stephen Hunter in Hot Springs (2000), he effectively pulls the archetypal strings of a classic crime (and western) plot.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2008 Booklist