Q&A: Ace Atkins

"Alabama is not the kind of place you think of as having a serious vice industry," says author Ace Atkins, "but when I learned about Phenix City, I was really proud of it. Look magazine called it the wickedest city in America. Fantastic!" His new novel, Wicked City, (see the review on p. 77), retells the true, but now forgotten, story of a small Southern town so notoriously corrupt that it inspired a Hollywood movie (The Phenix City Story), and the Alabama National Guard had to be called in to clean up the place following the shocking 1954 murder of Attorney General-Elect Albert Patterson.

You have written five other novels, but this is your first set in your native Alabama. Why did you wait so long to write about your home state?

I think I was looking for the right subject. But first I was locked into writing a series [the Nick Travers mysteries] that I couldn't deviate from, which was very frustrating. But then I broke that mold with a new publisher and a completely new kind of book with White Shadow. And that is what allowed me to write something really different. I instantly started thinking about Phenix City.

Why did you decide to write the Phenix City story as a novel rather than as true-crime nonfiction?

There had already been a couple of nonfiction books written about Phenix City. The interest for me with both White Shadow (based on a 1950s murder case in Tampa, FL) and Wicked City is that I was able to turn facts in a true story line into something that would excite the reader. Being a journalist, I researched Wicked City as if I was going to start a nonfiction book. I went through the newspapers and court files and interviewed firsthand subjects. Then I flipped around and looked at the material as a novelist. That's a lot of fun for me: balancing the worlds of the journalist and the novelist.

How did Phenix City become so corrupt, and why was this allowed to go on for so long?

Having started as an outpost for traders going into the wilderness, Phenix City for decades maintained that Wild West mentality. Financially, it generated a tremendous amount of money, not only for Russell County but also for the entire state. Politicians always counted on that Phenix City machine money for backing their campaigns. When the candidates got into office, they would just pretend that it didn't exist.

One of the core themes I wanted to explore with the novel was the Southern attitude of "well, that's just the way things have always been." It was that unquestioning mindset of "that's the way elected officials are and we need to put our faith in them" that created Phenix City with corruption at the highest political levels. It's not an overdramatization to say that people like Albert Patterson and sheriff Lamar Murphy, who dared to question their city officials, put their lives on the line. The lessons of Phenix City today can be applied anywhere there are serious abuses of power. For me, the core story line of Wicked City is the nature of questioning the people in power.

What's Phenix City like today?

There's not much of the old downtown Phenix City except the Coulter Building, where Albert Patterson had his law office, and the alley where he was shot. What used to be the red-light district has been completely torn down. The only reminder that Phenix City even existed as "the wickedest city in America" is a historical marker.

In your preface, you note that both of your grandfathers had ties to illegal businesses. Did you incorporate this family history in the novel?

Absolutely. One of my grandfathers, who's largely the model for one of the lead characters, worked for the highway department and was a go-between for Governor Big Jim Folsum. He knew where the highways were going to be built, so a lot of the money transferred from him was for payoffs for land development; interestingly, his route included Phenix City. My grandfather died in the early Eighties, so we'll never know the extent of what he knew, but my mother has childhood memories of witnessing money being exchanged. My other grandfather was a bootlegger.

What's your next project?

I like to find engrossing stories that can obsess me. I am writing a novel about the Fatty Arbuckle murder case from 1921 in San Francisco. Like Phenix City, it offers another great tale in which to explore American pop culture and history.