The Fallen

Starred review from May 22, 2017
One of President Trump’s most notorious off-color remarks appears in the first chapter of Edgar-finalist Atkins’s outstanding seventh crime novel featuring Army Ranger turned lawman Quinn Colson (after 2016’s The Innocents). Robber Rick Wilcox fires a gun in the air and threatens to grab women’s privates when he and the other members of his gang walk into a small-town bank wearing Trump masks. Quinn, who has recently been returned to the position of sheriff of Mississippi’s Tibbehah County, gets the news of the Trump bandits’ latest strike after a visit to Vienna’s Place, “a low-rent highway titty bar,” where the proprietress, Fannie Hatchcock, assaulted an overzealous customer with a hammer. The robberies reunite Quinn with Jon Holliday, a fed he first encountered when Holliday was infiltrating the corrupt political organization headed by local power broker Johnny Stagg. Atkins tosses in a missing persons case—Quinn’s sister Caddy, who runs an outreach program for abused women, asks him to look for two teenage girls—but the multiple plotlines don’t make the story too busy. As in recent books, Atkins lightens the mood with some humor, presenting a warts-and-all portrayal of a Southern community. Author tour. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.

Narrator MacLeod Andrews is a welcome addition to Ace Atkins's series featuring lawman Quinn Colson. Colson was previously voted out of his job as sheriff of Tibbehah County, Mississippi, but now he's back in office aiming to take on a cunning team of bank robbers. Andrews's deliberate pacing is somewhat undercut by the too-quick transitions from one subplot to another, an unfortunate production quirk that may have listeners falling behind. Otherwise, Andrews's earnest voice and convincing accents make Colson and his companions easy to root for. He cultivates the down-home atmosphere one might expect from a contemporary Southern setting but also effectively portrays the community's seedy underbelly. For the most part, the antagonists, particularly the bank robbers, are equally compelling characters. A.T.N. � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine