Grit in Your Grits

Dirty South is the fourth book by former Auburn football star and reporter Ace Atkins to feature Nick Travers, a former college football star who teaches and writes about the culture and history of blues music in the South while doing some amateur investigating on the side.

Atkins was a crime reporter for the Tampa Tribune when he published Crossroad Blues in 1998, the first Nick Travers story. The "dirty south" of the title is a name for a genre of hip-hop music that gained popularity starting around 2000, coming from clubs and DJs in the south and along the Gulf Coast. It's said to differ from the east coast and west coast schools of hip-hop by focusing more on the beats of the songs and maintaining an emphasis on partying and living large instead of politicial or social commentary even though it doesn't exclude them.

A young man with a bright future in this genre, the 15-year-old ALIAS, is being recorded by Nick Travers' old football teammate but is also being courted by a rival producer whose criminal connections are as real as his talent-spotting. Nick's friend Teddy calls him in because he knows of Nick's earlier success in amateur sleuthing and because ALIAS has been swindled out of nearly a million dollars that Teddy now owes to the rival producer. The problem: Teddy doesn't have the money and the rival has threatened his life if he doesn't come up with the cash. Nick needs to get the brooding young rapper to explain how he was conned so he can find the grifters and either get Teddy's money back or point the rival producer at someone else.

Although white, Nick has significant ties in New Orleans' black community, especially with some of its blues and jazz musicians of a generation before him. He finds himself operating a little at a loss when he talks to the rappers and their entourages, unfamiliar with their music and much of their lifestyle. By the same token, ALIAS is out of his own element when he stays with Nick's friends for safety. The culture clashes make for some interesting exploration and Atkins handles it well.

Dirty South is a fine crime novel and wears its noir perfume not inelegantly. Atkins is no Dashiell Hammett  -- whose 1921 investigation of the murder charges against movie star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle formed the plot for Atkins' own 2010 Devil's Garden. But he has significant skills and a knowledge and love of the places he's writing about, and deploys them well in service of his story. Although Dirty South is a bit thin on the action and somewhat more confusing than the earlier Travers books, it's a rewarding read for the crime-novel fan who may want to reflect a little bit after putting it down when it ends.