Wicked City
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
In 1955, Look magazine called Phenix City, Alabama, 'The Wickedest City in America,' a stew of organized crime and corruption, run by a machine that dealt with complaints forcefully and with dispatch.
When crime-fighting attorney Albert Patterson is gunned down in a Phenix City alley in the spring of 1954, the entire town seems to pause just for a moment-and when it starts up again, there is something different about it. A small group of men meet and decide that they have had enough, but what that means and where it will take them is something they could not have foreseen. Over the course of the next several months, lives will change, people will die, and unexpected heroes will emerge - 'like a Randolph Scott western,' one of them remarks, 'played out not with horses and Winchesters but with Chevys and .38s and switchblades.'
Atkins draws from the worlds of pulp and Faulkner in Wicked City, using characters from the town's true history to tell a story of the best and worst of morality, and the ambiguity in between.
Critical Praise:
"This is the classic Western tale of good vs. evil, 'played out not with horses and Winchesters but with Chevys and Fords and .38s and switchblades.' The result is a gripping, superb crime story, all the more remarkable because it really did happen. Highly recommended." Library Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
