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18 reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Literary, historical detective fiction
6 April 2009
Format:Hardcover
Dashiell Hammett investigating the first-ever celebrity murder trial on the foggy streets of San Francisco, a silent-film star hounded in the newspapers by William Randolph Hearst himself -- Ace Atkins knows how to make historical fiction out of a hard-boiled detective story.
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was roaring through the '20s with plenty of showgirls and hooch when he pajama-partied a little too much and a starlet got dead. At the time, Hammett was a Pinkerton operative hired to find witnesses whom prosecutors were hiding. Hearst, of course, deployed his yellow-journalism reporters to crucify the "portly beast" Arbuckle. (Chris Farley wanted to play Fatty in a movie, and it would have been a match, because Arbuckle was a self-loathing porker with a gift for making people laugh and no desire ever to grow up.)
Ace Atkins -- yeah, that's really his name -- writes cinematically: Short scenes with clever "buttons" alternate with long swaths of snappy dialogue. One flimflam man, for example, describes another as "a phony bird. That's halfway between crazy and a con man, and that's the middle of the road, brother."
Hammett -- he was "Sam" then, back before his Dashiell days -- tails tricksters and crooks into ornate hotel lobbies and up San Francisco's hills, wheezing with the effort and pausing to spit blood into his handkerchief. While some good-hearted folks appear -- Sam's first wife, one of the Pinkertons, a snitch named Pete the Fink -- the speakeasies and courtrooms of The City are filled by people with their hands out, thumbing their noses at what passes for an upright legal system.
Atkins works too hard at blackening Hearst's character in the epilogue, but Devil's Garden still rises far beyond pulp fiction to a much higher level. The three central characters -- Sam, Fatty and W.R. -- are all blameworthy, all filled with shame but unwilling to do much about it. In Atkins' world, prudes are really grifters, a power broker is just a little boy, a legal case is like a melodrama and a scalawag can be a stand-up guy. There aren't many moralistic blacks and whites in Devil's Garden -- just a lot of grays, melting off into that San Francisco fog.
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was roaring through the '20s with plenty of showgirls and hooch when he pajama-partied a little too much and a starlet got dead. At the time, Hammett was a Pinkerton operative hired to find witnesses whom prosecutors were hiding. Hearst, of course, deployed his yellow-journalism reporters to crucify the "portly beast" Arbuckle. (Chris Farley wanted to play Fatty in a movie, and it would have been a match, because Arbuckle was a self-loathing porker with a gift for making people laugh and no desire ever to grow up.)
Ace Atkins -- yeah, that's really his name -- writes cinematically: Short scenes with clever "buttons" alternate with long swaths of snappy dialogue. One flimflam man, for example, describes another as "a phony bird. That's halfway between crazy and a con man, and that's the middle of the road, brother."
Hammett -- he was "Sam" then, back before his Dashiell days -- tails tricksters and crooks into ornate hotel lobbies and up San Francisco's hills, wheezing with the effort and pausing to spit blood into his handkerchief. While some good-hearted folks appear -- Sam's first wife, one of the Pinkertons, a snitch named Pete the Fink -- the speakeasies and courtrooms of The City are filled by people with their hands out, thumbing their noses at what passes for an upright legal system.
Atkins works too hard at blackening Hearst's character in the epilogue, but Devil's Garden still rises far beyond pulp fiction to a much higher level. The three central characters -- Sam, Fatty and W.R. -- are all blameworthy, all filled with shame but unwilling to do much about it. In Atkins' world, prudes are really grifters, a power broker is just a little boy, a legal case is like a melodrama and a scalawag can be a stand-up guy. There aren't many moralistic blacks and whites in Devil's Garden -- just a lot of grays, melting off into that San Francisco fog.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
terrific silent movie era noir
11 April 2009
Format:Hardcover
In 1921, following a wild party at a San Francisco hotel, silent film star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle is arrested for the alleged murder of actress Virginia Rappe. The evidence is circumstantial at best, but William Randolph Hearst using his colossal newspaper kingdom assaults the actor accusing him of suffocating the poor starlet with his humongous weight.
Pinkerton private investigator Sam Dashiell Hammett investigates the case for the defense. He finds at best a sloppy official inquiry by SFPD and an even more questionable autopsy; as if everyone feared the wrath of Hearst. Rightfully so, as the newspaper mogul keeps up the tirade until Arbuckle is condemned in public and his comedic movie career buried under innuendos and disinformation. Hammett finds all sorts of Hollywood scandals, but none as perverse as Hearst's unethical efforts that the sleuth believes is to save the movie career of his mistress Marian Davies at the expense of Arbuckle.
Ace Atkins' third historical mystery (see WHITE SHADOW and WICKED CITY) is a terrific silent movie era noir focusing on the notorious Arbuckle murder case. The story line is fast-paced, filled with action, loaded with real persona, and captures the era especially how influential the newspapers (specifically Hearst) as well as anyone since Citizen Caine.
Harriet Klausner
Pinkerton private investigator Sam Dashiell Hammett investigates the case for the defense. He finds at best a sloppy official inquiry by SFPD and an even more questionable autopsy; as if everyone feared the wrath of Hearst. Rightfully so, as the newspaper mogul keeps up the tirade until Arbuckle is condemned in public and his comedic movie career buried under innuendos and disinformation. Hammett finds all sorts of Hollywood scandals, but none as perverse as Hearst's unethical efforts that the sleuth believes is to save the movie career of his mistress Marian Davies at the expense of Arbuckle.
Ace Atkins' third historical mystery (see WHITE SHADOW and WICKED CITY) is a terrific silent movie era noir focusing on the notorious Arbuckle murder case. The story line is fast-paced, filled with action, loaded with real persona, and captures the era especially how influential the newspapers (specifically Hearst) as well as anyone since Citizen Caine.
Harriet Klausner
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Just doesn't get any better than this!
26 May 2009
Format:Hardcover
With the publication of WHITE SHADOW and WICKED CITY, the novels published just prior to DEVIL'S GARDEN, Ace Atkins entered into the big leagues of great, memorable fiction. Now with the publication of DEVIL'S GARDEN, Ace proves that he deserves a permanent slot on every major best seller list (New York Times, USA Today, etc.) and that people who enjoy a great read should stand up and take notice. Ace has a wonderful flair for taking unique historical events, researching them impeccably and then turning them into "movies for the mind". I've been a fan of Ace for a long time and have read all of his books. And DEVIL'S GARDEN is Ace's best book yet. This is an author who deserves to be sharing the spotlight with everyone from Grisham to Parker to Patterson to any other of today's biggest names in fiction. If you haven't read Ace Atkins, then you are truly missing out. And if you miss reading DEVIL'S GARDEN, well, you might just not be a serious reader. Do yourself a favor: if you only buy one novel to read this Spring, make it DEVIL'S GARDEN.
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