Nick Travers

Nick Travers is back where it all began. 25 years after The Philadelphia Inquirer proclaimed Crossroad Blues "an impressive debut by a promising new talent," the acclaimed crime novel is back. A modern, Southern reinvention of The Maltese Falcon, Crossroad Blues won noir fans with its nod to the masters and thrilled readers with a wild ride along Highway 61. It's here that we first meet Nick Travers, an ex–New Orleans Saint turned Tulane University blues historian. Nick searches for the lost recordings of 1930s bluesman Robert Johnson-and a missing colleague-and finds trouble at every turn. The cast of characters includes a red-headed siren, an Elvis-worshipping hitman, Johnson's ghost, and the Mississippi Delta itself. Crossroad Blues still sings.

In the 1950s, Ruby Walker boarded the Illinois Central from Mississippi to the Promised Land-Chicago. She became one of the greatest blues singers the city has ever known, only to lose everything when she was convicted of murdering her lover and producer, Billy Lyons, in 1959. She's been locked in a prison cell ever since. Now, a flickering hope emerges for Walker in the form of letters from a Tulane University blues historian named Nick Travers. She agrees to an interview only in exchange for him checking out what she calls the truth behind Lyons's last hours. Travers soon learns there are those who still want the details of Lyons's death to remain hidden in the rubble of the blighted neighborhoods.

With a precise eye for detail, Atkins takes Nick 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. The plan is simple. 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. "When all is said and done, Dark End sheds light on the underbelly of politics, racism and the junking of American culture. Atkins is an astute observer of life as well as a singular voice in fiction."-USA Today

When music mogul Teddy Paris, a former teammate from the New Orleans Saints, visits Nick Travers 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. When a killer hits too close, Nick takes ALIAS with him to the Mississippi Delta for 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 lakefront, and ultimately to the brackish muck of the Bayou Savage.