Brilliant criminal writer Ace Atkins is the April 2010 Favorite Author at VJ Books.
Before turning to writing full time, Atkins worked as a crime reporter in the newsroom of The Tampa Tribune for several years. Here he earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination and Livingston Award nomination for his seven-part series about an unsolved murder of a Tampa socialite in 1956, “Tampa Confidential,” which had the whole city buzzing for weeks.
Over the past decade, Ace Atkins has been building up an immense following for his engaging fiction based on actual historical events. An amazingly thorough researcher, Atkins writes with authority using his extensive reading of historical records to create compelling fiction.
Ace Atkins is also the author of four… Nick Travers novels-Dirty South, Dark End of the Street, Leavin’ Trunk Blues, and Crossroad Blues. His novels Infamous, Devil’s Garden, Wicked City, and White Shadow are all set in Atkins’ former and current homes-San Francisco, Alabama, and Tampa.
In Infamous, Atkins takes you back to July 1933, as Machine Gun and Kathryn Kelly plot and execute the kidnapping of wealthy oilman Charles Urschel. Holding him hostage for hundreds of thousands of dollars, they have a remarkably thorough and thought out plan for collecting the ransom. But almost immediately, things start to go wrong with their plans.
The result is a mesmerizing tale set in the first days of the modern FBI, featuring one of the best femmes fatales in history and some of the most colorful supporting characters in recent crime fiction.
Award-winning author Leonard Elmore comments “Keep an eye on Ace Atkins. He can write rings around most of the names in the crime field.”
Edgar Award winner Michael Connelly says of Atkins “One of the best crime writers at work today.”
Right now, Ace Atkins is developing a new series set in rural Mississippi. The first of these novels will hit stores in Spring 2011.
Signed first editions of Infamous, as well as other exciting Ace Atkins novels, are available at VJ Books (http://www.vjbooks.com).
Ace Atkins was born June 28, 1970 in Troy, Alabama and now lives on a historic farm outside Oxford, Mississippi with his family.
