Leavin' Trunk Blues (A Nick Travers mystery) [Paperback]

In Chicago, Nick meets Ruby, who insists she is innocent. She pleads with Nick, who had recent success solving a mystery, to prove her innocence. Unable to resist the lure of Ruby, who was one step away from music legend, Nick begins to investigate the death of Lyons back in 1959. However, his inquires leads to the maniacal Stagger Lee and his assortment of lunatics wanting the case remaining closed and Nick dead.

The second Nick Travers' blues mystery, LEAVIN' TRUNK BLUES, is a well written, but much darker tale than its predecessor (see CROSSROAD BLUES) is. The story line still sings with a rhythm not often seen in an amateur sleuth tale. The setting seems ghostly in an abandoned urban way and supplemented by the arctic Christmas weather that together adds up to the overall feeling of gloom. However, the light that shines through the bleak landscape is the heroic Nick, who tries to do the right thing even, as he feels like his enemy's blitz has sacked him several times. Ace Atkins scores with his second mystery that provides readers an entertaining tale that educates the audience on a part of Americana.

Harriet Klausner

Stagger Lee is the name of a number of blues and jazz standards about a tough Chicago man who gambles with, then murders, a fellow named Billy (usually Lyons). The stories are always the same, though a number of different artists, from Lloyd Price to Wilson Pickett, from the Grateful Dead to Nick Cave, have taken ownership of the song by switching around events, tempos, names, details. But the centerpiece is still the evil, dangerous, magnetic Stagger Lee.

In Ace Atkins' version, Stagger Lee is all the evil in Chicago's south side rolled into a single man, and Billy Lyons was the manager of a female blues artist, Ruby Walker, known as "the Sweet Black Angel". When Billy turned up dead, the Black Angel was accused of his murder and went to prison for life.

Enter Nick Travers, blues historian, amateur detective and old softy. When Ruby asks Nick to help her find out who killed Billy and get her out of jail, Nick jumps right in, meeting famous blues musicians, beautiful, knife-wielding assassins and Stagger Lee himself, taking time along the way to take a dig at that little blond kid who thinks he plays the blues but isn't old enough to know what they are.

Ace Atkins writes well. He's toned down a lot of the purple prose that marred "Crossroad Blues" and here concentrates on good, solid description and storytelling. His evocation of the blues, the life, the players, are all spot on and he makes you feel the desperation in the hearts of the people who migrated to Chicago in order to find a better life, only to find the projects and poverty. He makes you want to listen to every name that he drops. When he's good, he's very, very good.

But his hold on good is a little spotty. Atkins depends too heavily on internal monologue, too often writing in sentence fragments that he seems thinks make sense and allow the reader into the mind of the character. They don't. Instead, they seem like the author was too lazy to finish his sentences and the editor was too lazy to correct him.

The two female assassins, who could have been the most interesting characters, are written as comedy relief, with Annie carrying on a love affair with her butcher knife "Willie" and fantasizing about moving to Riverdale, home of Archie & pals. Petie Wheatstraw, a blues hanger-on is also written a little on the cartoon-ey side. And I find it hard, even when suspending disbelief, to accept that the police can't find and catch the "biggest black man [Nick] had ever seen", Stagger Lee, especially when he commits murders in broad daylight and everyone knows where he lives. Large parts of this book could not have happened if the laws of logic had not been repealed.

That said, Nick himself is a fine character, written with the right touch of vulnerability and strength, music geek knowledge and girl stupidity. His amour, Kate, is brash and smart, with just the right amount of softness. And Dirty Jimmy is one of the most fun characters I've come across in a while.

Atkins' mysteries won't win any awards for originality and they won't knock your socks off as literature. But they are a wonderful way to pass some hours and learn about old blues while being entertained.

It seemed like everyone in the Mississippi delta country could hear that sweet song that Robert Johnson sang calling them north to Chicago. It fell on there ears like a sweet lullaby, a promise of a better life to the north. Young Ruby Walker was no exception. As a teenager she haunted the roadhouses and blues joints hoping that one day she could sing the blues in the sweet home up north "Chicago."

Well, Ruby did make it north and for a while it was a good and sweet home. Ruby hit the big time and became known for her song Leavin' Trunk Blues. But it seemed predestined that Ruby was to live a life of the blues. One morning she woke up soaked in the blood of her manager and lover, Billy Lyons and before she knew it she was serving life in the big house for his murder.

That was in 1959 and as the years pass slowly by, Ruby steadfastly maintained that she is innocent. She begins to write to professor and blues historian Nick Travers. Nick agrees to research the circumstances surrounding the murder, because he hopes to do research on Ruby, her life and the people she knew at the time. Nick feels that historians are missing the opportunity to record living history by forgetting the people who participated in the great migration and focusing on the 1930's and the delta.

Ace Atkins has created a tasty mystery with Leavin' Trunk Blues, the second of his Nick Travers series. It is nicely atmospheric taking place in Chicago with Nick visiting blues clubs as well as Chicago's seedy underbelly to dig up information. Fast paced with action and adventure to spare, it draws the reader quickly into Nicks world.

Nick is an unlikely sleuth. A former football player who fell in love with the blues and became a blues historian from Tulane University. We find out that he can get down and dirty with the best of them and there are times in Leavin' Trunk Blues that he has to.

For a fan of mysteries or a fan of the blues, Leavin' Trunk Blues is a great read. If you are both it is even better.