First-rate historical novel is also a superb crime story

By: BRUCE DeSILVA - Associated Press | Saturday, May 13, 2006 7:26 PM PDT ∞

Ace Atkins, author of four entertaining noir novels featuring a detective named Nick Travers, has departed from his successful formula to write a historical novel about the gangsters of 1950's Tampa, Fla.

"White Shadow" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $24.95), based on the unsolved, real-life throat-slashing of a retired bootlegger named Charlie Wall, succeeds both as a first-rate historical novel and as a superb crime story.

The book packs the emotional wallop of Dennis Lehane's "Mystic River." It is as gritty as James Ellroy's "L.A. Confidential." And yet, the prose is as lyrical as James Lee Burke's "Crusader's Cross."

The Nick Travers novels were good in a watch-me-write-like-Raymond-Chandler sort of way, but with "White Shadow," Atkins has found his true voice.

He begins by transporting the reader back 50 years to the Tampa of straw boaters and two-toned shoes, of cock fights and a numbers racket known as "bolita," of cops who were on sale to the highest bidder and scheming Cuban revolutionaries who weren't:

"You must walk to the corner of Franklin and Polk and not look back, for fear that you will see the soulless glass-and-steel place that Tampa has become, but look at that dead corner of five-and-dimes, the Woolworth's and the Kress's, and over their roofs to the old Floridian Hotel, where we all used to drink at its big bar called the Sapphire Room and where Eleanor broke your heart at least twice."

L.B. Turner, a broken old newsman with more than his share of regrets, is the fictional narrator who carries us back in time and shows us around. He lets us drink with the old bootlegger at The Turf, eavesdrop on Santo Trafficante Jr. and George Raft, listen to Fidel Castro excite a crowd, and follow a rare, honest cop and a then-young reporter as they try to figure out who killed the old man.

Atkins became interested in old Tampa while working as a reporter for the Tampa Tribune, where he wrote a seven-part series about another murder from the 1950s. As a novelist, he still tackled the Charlie Wall story like a reporter, unearthing old police files and tracking down and interviewing retired cops and surviving witnesses.

Atkins strove to keep the story close to the facts, and many of the book's characters, from Tampa detective Ellis Clifton to mobbed-up bar owner Johnny Riviera, were real. But as a novel, the book also contains fictional incidents and both made-up and composite characters.

The old journalist inside Atkins wants to have it both ways, however. So if you'd like to see some of the fruits of his research, stripped clean of fiction, you can listen to the reminiscences of Ellis Clifton and view old police files from the case on the author's Web site, www.aceatkins.com.

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