The Innocents is the latest novel by Ace Atkins. It's also the latest novel in the Quinn Colson detective series. Set in the town of Jericho, Mississippi, it is a story that features small-time thugs, drug deals, a morally ambiguous hero and a hint that the town’s deepest, darkest secrets have yet to come to light. Atkins, who is a former crime reporter, says that the seeds of the book were planted in a newspaper account he’d read of a horrific crime not far from his home in Oxford, Mississippi.
"There was a woman, probably 25-30 miles from here that was set on fire and left to die," he says. "Nobody knew what happened. It was actually an unsolved crime as recently as four months ago. Just the idea of the horror of that crime. Right after it occurred, I knew it was something that would spawn some kind of a story for one of the Quinn books.
That victim’s name was Jessica Chambers. Atkins says that he did not want to open old wounds by exploring that story but instead to imagine the environment that would give rise to such a horrific crime. Instead of looking out at the world around Mississippi, Atkins choose to look closer, to look inward. This, he adds, is unusual in the world of crime fiction.
"You see so many of them that are about big world topics," he says. "International intrigue, Navy SEALs, all that kind of stuff. Instead of doing some big, sprawling book I wanted to do something that was about a small community. I hope it has some kind of resonance to the world at large. American issues, that kind of stuff."
The Innocents is the sixth book in the Quinn Colson series. Colson is a former U.S. Army Ranger who returned to Mississippi, became sheriff, then saw himself voted out of office. Although he attempts to make his corner of the world a better place, Colson is far from a perfect man. Atkins says that he wouldn’t have the character be any other way.
"Quinn does things of questionable character," Atkins says. "He's having a relationship with a married woman. He does not always make the right decisions. He says things in the heat of the moment that probably he should not say. So, yeah, absolutely, I wanted to make him a fully-flawed character because if not, if you're just writing about somebody who's just a white hat, it gets to be very boring after several books."
Atkins continues, "He's an important component of the books. But also his relationship between his mother and his sister and his father and the town itself. The other part of what I wanted to write about was somebody coming home from a broken, busted part of our world and then find their part of the world is equally as broken and busted and has as many flaws as what they were fighting for on the other side of the earth."
Atkins published the first Colson novel in 2011, titled The Ranger. The author says he wanted to shine a light on a particular kind of character in American life, the war veteran of the post-9/11 world.
"This was a time when you had a massive amount of veterans who were returning home from Iraq, Afghanistan, and they were coming back to make a normal way in life," he says. "Many of them got into law enforcement. Some of them got into farming. Some of them did different jobs. I think that just living in this area and seeing that; that's how I think Quinn became a very contemporary character. And very true to this region as well."
In a way, there's something very classic about a story focusing on a man returning from war to a changed world.
"I stole a lot from The Odyssey," he says, "it's a very old tale. It's almost Western in nature. A man returning from the front and trying to make his way in a corrupt world."
Ace Atkins says that training as a journalist first helped him create the brisk action required for a detective or crime novel.
"When you're a newspaper writer you don't have the luxury of setting things up for a very long amount of time," he says. "You've got to get in and explain who you're talking to, and the situation, and delving right into it."
He adds that although there is mystery and suspense in his fiction, he says that he is, above all else, a writer who appreciates character.
"Character is everything to me in books," Atkins adds. "One of my all-time heroes, which I've learned so much from, was Elmore Leonard. I think having the characters really telling the story and having those characters drive the story is something that I learned a great deal from him. There was also a wonderful writer years ago, George Higgins, those characters walked onto the page and took over with a life of their own."
Atkins says that looking at his own life in his adopted home state of Mississippi has provided him with plenty of source material for the Colson novels.
"I think about people here in Oxford," he says, "which is a fairly wealthy town in Mississippi. You get outside, into the county, and there are some people that really need help. There are some very, very broken places around here. People like to think that they don't exist. But that's why Mississippi is interesting: last in education, first in poverty. Number one in corruption. For a crime novelist, it's a good sandbox to work in."
Despite Mississippi’s shortcomings, Atkins says he has no desire to leave any time soon.
"It's a love-hate relationship I have with this area," he says. "I love the food here. I love the music here. Most of the people here are the most kind, generous people there are. It feels very much home for me. It's kind of like going home to your family," he adds, "with tension and turmoil and problems. It's still your family. I think that's the way I feel about the South. It's home, and it's something maybe you don’t' even choose for yourself."
The Innocents is out now. Ace Atkins reads at Watermark Books Monday, July 18 at 6 p.m.
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Jedd Beaudoin is the host of Strange Currency. Follow him on Twitter @JeddBeaudoin.
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