Ace Atkins has been writing serious crime and detective novels now for years. Some of Atkins’ short stories are wry, but here he has let his absurdist side have its way, for 368 pages. The scene is Atlanta, “Hot Lanta,” in 1985, an era of discoes, heavy metal, club life.
It was also, we are told, a time when Atlanta was teeming with Russian KGB spies. In the novel a 15-year-old boy is the first to notice. Peter Bennett is largely ignored by his single mom, Connie, as she goes out night after night with her new boyfriend. Of course Peter hates him, but Gary is especially awful. He wears cowboy boots, tight jeans, v-necks with bristling chest hair, gold medallions, too much Brute.
Gary is opening up a fitness gym, The Muscle Factory, and in his Porche’s glove box has a
38 special and tape cassettes of Russian music. When excited, he has an uncertain foreign accent. Gary, Peter concludes, is a Russian spy. His full name is name is Gary Powers, which seems a little too much on the nose, even for an overconfident spy.
Peter has been reading the novels of Dennis X. Hotchner, whose crime thrillers feature a cool detective with a fearsome, giant Black sidekick. In between martinis, Hotch is trying to write a novel set in 1943 in which he kills Hitler, but it is not going well.
In the Spenser novels, which Atkins took over, Spenser has a terrifying sidekick, Hawk. In the present, in Atlanta, Hotchner’s sidekick is Jackie Demure, who used to be “Big Time” Jackie Johnson, defensive end for the Falcons, and is now a successful drag queen impersonator, most often playing Tina Turner.
One is reminded of John Lithgow’s character Roberta Muldoon, also an ex- pro football player, in “The World According to Garp.” (Hotchner works in the bookstore Oxford, Too, a shout-out to Square Books in Atkins’ home town.) This novel is laced with easter eggs.
Peter connects with Hotchner, enlists his help, and the plot is set in motion. Who is Gary, comes first, and then a woman, Jennie Buckner, Connie’s coworker at Scientific Atlanta, is murdered. This company purports to be manufacturing cable TV boxes, but may be involved in research on Ronald Reagan’s missile defense project, Star Wars.
No one is exactly who they seem. All motives are fake or at least mixed. It is the spy and counter-spy of “Mad Magazine.” The FBI and the Atlanta PD become involved and the action moves around Atlanta to the Hyatt, with its gigantic atrium, the Varsity Grill, Piedmont Park.
The plot is a romp, too labyrinthine and wonderfully, comically ridiculous to summarize, even if I wanted to. Everyone fights the terrible traffic and navigates the many Peachtree streets. Comic as it is, the novel includes kidnappings, several brutal killings and some torture: but so what?
