Sunday, Apr. 13, 2008

Phenix City's villainous past has the makings of good fiction. But how do novels set post-'54 affect the real city?

Alabama-born author Ace Atkins set his new book in the wake of Albert Patterson's killing

Growing up in Auburn, Ala., in the 1970s, Ace Atkins would ride with his family through Phenix City on the way to Columbus.

And inevitably, when they hit the Alabama border town, his mom would tell stories about her own passage through the city in the 1950s.

"She would say that when they would go over to Columbus to go shopping, the girls would hide down, like sneak down in their car, because they were so afraid that they were passing through the downtown of Phenix City," Atkins said.

"They were so afraid someone was going to get them."

They had their choice of bogeymen: Crooked gambling club owners. Prostitution ring kingpins looking for new girls to pimp. Rowdy drunks still reeling from Friday night revelries.

Atkins' mom remembered her own father’s warnings, too. “Her father always used to say, "If you could drain the Chattahoochee at that point, between Phenix City and Columbus, there was no telling how many bodies you would find.' "

Horrible stories. True stories.

And just the stuff to feed the imagination of a budding young writer.

He filed it away, behind years of college football and work as a newspaper reporter. But later, after he’d started penning novels, the idea resurfaced.

His novel, “Wicked City,” was released Thursday. It’s set largely in the aftermath of the 1954 slaying of attorney general nominee Albert Patterson that marked the zenith of Phenix City’s nefarious red-light district.

“Wicked City” is a work of fiction. It reads almost like a western set in the shadowy streets and neon-lit alleys of the mid-century, part Elmore Leonard, part Zane Grey. But the characters are real people. There’s Albert Patterson’s son, John. There’s Lamar Murphy, a service station owner who’d become sheriff. There’s District Attorney Arch Ferrell, and crooked assistant sheriff Albert Fuller.

The book’s dialogue is coarse sometimes, and its unflinching descriptions of the bustle, and especially the hustle, of the city’s vice district after dark or behind closed doors will furrow some brows.

“My goal in doing this is to bring this world to life,” Atkins says, “and there’s no way a history book or a nonfiction book can bring this story to living color the way a novel can.”

But it’s a world that P h e n i x C i t y re s i d e n t s worked hard to kill, to put behind them. Some survivors of those days aren’t happy to see someone revive the past, yet again.

“I think we’ve hashed it o ve r t o o m a n y t i m e s already,” said Lee Lott, who was Phenix City mayor from 1965 to 1968. “About once a year a book comes out. It doesn’t do the city any good. It doesn’t do anybody any good.”

Atkins interviewed John Patterson, the son who became attorney general in his slain father’s place, while researching his book. John Patterson, 86, understands Lott’s position.

“There’s a lot of people in Phenix City that would like to put that thing behind them and put it in the past,” he said. “This kind of thing revives it, and some people don’t like that. But I have no c o n t ro l ove r t h a t , a n d nobody else does. Mr. Atkins can write about anything he wants to.