Addison McKellar is living the dream: She has a tasteful Tudor mansion in one of the toniest neighborhoods in Memphis, a couple of sometimes sweet kids and a charming, socially connected husband, Dean, whose construction company keeps the money flowing in. But now Dean has disappeared, and the harder Addy looks for him, the more it seems like he was never there.
Joanna Grayson lived the dream back in 1967, when she co-starred with Elvis Presley in a movie, “Easy Come, Easy Go.” In Memphis, that connection allows her a modest living signing her memoir and recounting stories for fans. On the side she facilitates the private sale of antiques — until her partner in that venture is murdered.
Gaultier (perhaps not his real name) might seem to be living the dream, floating from Dubai to Paris to London on private jets, togged out in silk suits and sipping fine wines. But his business as a global arms dealer can be a real headache, like when a fellow merchant of death whom he calls the One-Armed Man dangles him off a Cairo hotel balcony to pry information from him. “The things he did,” Gaultier muses later, “to feed and clothe his six children, his wife, and two mistresses.”
What do these people have to do with one another? Finding out is the job of legendary Memphis private detective Porter Hayes, and his pursuit of the connections forms the plot of Ace Atkins’ rollicking new thriller, “Don’t Let the Devil Ride.”
Hayes is a Black man in his 70s, a Vietnam vet and former police officer, who made a name for himself as a PI. He carefully maintains his image — leather jacket, vintage Mercedes — formed in the 1970s and echoing blaxploitation movie heroes like John Shaft, although Hayes plays it with a light, ironic hand.
I’ve long been a fan of Atkins’ books — his series about New Orleans detective Nick Travers and Mississippi sheriff Quinn Colson and his continuation of the late Robert B. Parker’s Spenser books, as well as four stand-alone historical crime novels, including my favorite Tampa-set novel, “White Shadow.” (Atkins got to know the Tampa territory as a reporter for the Tampa Tribune.)
He’s into something different with “Don’t Let the Devil Ride.” It reminds me of Elmore Leonard’s books, with its colorful characters, sharp observations, bursts of violence and whipcrack banter.
It’s also steeped in Memphis flavor, including all the diners and barbecue joints where Hayes and his buddy Deacon Malone like to eat (and carefully rank). The city’s history and highways and social strata, and the centrifugal force of Graceland, anchor the setting.
It’s a Memphis connection that brings Addy to Hayes after the police arrest her for making a fuss at what she thought was McKellar Construction’s office in the Cotton Exchange Building, and then shrug off her missing-husband report. Her father, Sami Hassan, is the longtime owner of Bluff City Barbecue, which Deacon deems “fourth best in Memphis,” and Sami and Hayes go way, way back.
Addy lives in posh Central Gardens, which Hayes remembers as the neighborhood where his mother worked as a maid. Addy’s situation intrigues him, and he likes her brash attitude, so he takes the case. Suddenly Dean’s buddies, who Addy thought were her friends, too, are gaslighting her, and the paper trails Hayes follows lead right into rabbit holes.
Joanna, meanwhile, is meeting with a client, Leslie Grimes, “founder and CEO of a Christian gift shop and bookstore chain with more than eight hundred stores in forty-seven states. He also did a bit of chatting on cable news about family values and political nonsense while maintaining a rabid fascination with high-end antiques.”
Which is where Joanna fits in. Grimes is so pious he gets the vapors just seeing someone sip a mint julep, but he’s perfectly OK with spending millions on plundered biblical artifacts, and it’s not his business if blood gets shed in the process.
Gaultier is enjoying a pleasant sojourn in Paris when he’s abducted by a Russian named Anatoliy Zub, “the kind of man who gave arms dealers a bad name. He’d crawled out of the former Soviet Union and made billions off its relics.” And where does Zub take Gaultier? Memphis, of course.
I’m not going to give away any more, because there’s too much fun to be had watching Hayes put it all together. But as one young thug Hayes interviews says to his buddy, “Listen, man. This old ‘Superfly’ … used to own this town.”
In “Don’t Let the Devil Ride,” he still does.
Colette Bancroft reviews books for the Tampa Bay Times.
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About the book
“DON’T LET THE DEVIL RIDE”
Ace Atkins
William Morrow. 371 pp. $30.
