Ace Atkins (The Sinners; The Innocents) brews a heady mixture of international adventure, domestic suspense, and a private detective story in the elaborately plotted, tightly coiled Don't Let the Devil Ride.
Although Addison McKellar's husband, Dean, travels often for his successful construction business based in Memphis, Tenn., he frequently checks in with her and their two children. But Dean hasn't called since he left for London a week ago. Addison has a meltdown when she goes to Dean's office and discovers that the space hasn't been occupied by his company for two years. Friends and police dismiss her concerns about Dean, citing her reputation for drinking too much. But her father refers her to private investigator Porter Hayes, a former cop, who soon learns that neither Dean McKellar nor his firm exists. The novel moves from Memphis to Istanbul to Paris and involves the Russian underworld, a French criminal, a Southern evangelist, and an aging actress still capitalizing on the one movie she made decades ago with Elvis Presley.
Atkins cunningly combines the tenets of traditional private detective fiction with a global romp, while bits of well-placed Hollywood gossip add levity. The Edgar Award nominee for two novels in his Quinn Colson series, who was also selected by Robert B. Parker's family to continue the Spenser series, Atkins elegantly weaves each plot thread here into a brisk, engrossing story. Every character shines as he shows how each of them is affected by neighborhoods of Memphis where "everybody got a side hustle."
Don't Let the Devil Ride delivers a most satisfying thriller. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer