The wicked city was just a struggling burg on the banks of the Chattahoochee River when Ace Atkins went to high school in nearby Auburn during the 1980s. Then he came across a reference to a 1955 B-movie titled "The Phenix City Story," a semi-documentary about a place that Look magazine called "the wickedest city in America."

A kind of Wild West outpost in the heart of Dixie, right across the bridge from Columbus, Ga., Phenix City was a nest of vice, corruption and organized crime. The sleaze thrived right up to the day in 1954 when Albert Patterson, the reform Democratic nominee for state attorney general, was assassinated there in an alley by his office. Martial law was declared and the National Guard called in to sweep up the place. The deputy sheriff was convicted of murder, but the plot extended to a web of other officials.

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Atkins became hooked on the history. One of his grandfathers had helped broker underhanded deals for the governor between the Alabama highway department and local officials around the state, including in Phenix City. His other grandfather was a moonshiner.

Now Atkins has set his latest historical novel, "Wicked City," in the middle of the town at the time of its most notorious crime.

"For me to write a novel, I wanted it to be about something I could be obsessed with and something I knew about," Atkins said. "That was Phenix City."

A former crime reporter for the Tampa Tribune, Atkins, 37, talked recently about Phenix City from the farmhouse where he lives with his wife outside Oxford, Miss.

A sampling of Atkins' Phenix City research can also be found on his Web site, www.aceatkins.com.

Q: Just how wicked was "the wickedest city in America"?

A: Extremely wicked. More like Deadwood. An old vice town able to flourish and be untouched way past its time. There was murder, constant gambling, prostitution, narcotics, guns. It was a family business for a lot of people. There was a school for safecrackers. There was a company that made loaded dice. Brass knuckles were made there. Early pornography films were shot there. There was an abortion racket and baby sales.

One of the misconceptions about Phenix City is that it almost sounds like a fun place. Gambling, loose women —- hell, wish it was still open. But this wasn't Las Vegas. It was a rough, gritty atmosphere.

Q: How'd it get that way?

A: It had always been an outlaw town. In the 1800s, before the Civil War, it was the last outpost before going into less civilized areas. There was a cleanup in the 1920s, then it went back.

What really did it was the Depression. City leaders decided by bringing gambling and vice in, they could make money for the town. Then World War II happened and Fort Benning exploded. All these guys with money in their pockets about to be shipped off, not knowing if they were coming back. So many servicemen would come on weekends they didn't have enough beds for the prostitutes. They'd have pickup trucks with canopies over the backs and charge by the minute.

Q: This was in the middle of the Bible Belt. Where was the opposition?

A: Anybody who would complain or do anything was run out of town. There was a minister who did a sermon against vice and prostitution and the next day he was arrested for rape. That's what happened to anybody who spoke up.

It was the redneck mafia. In Phenix City, it was called the Machine. The ballot boxes were rigged. They'd do it in the open; the deputy sheriff would be there stuffing ballots from dead people. There was nothing you could do about it. Your vote didn't matter.

Citizens finally banded together and formed the Russell [County] Betterment Association. When they went to see the governor and asked him to do something, he sent a special investigator. The investigator came back and said, "Governor, I didn't see anything." That's what they were dealing with. It was making money, and people looked the other way.

Q: Why write a novel when the real thing seems stranger than any fiction?

A: To get to the real truth of the story and the heart of the characters. You can be much more intimate as a novelist writing about historical characters. You can really get into their minds and thought process. I try to get things as right as I can, but I'm always serving the novel. It's something I struggle with, this tension between telling what happened and what works best for the book.

Funny thing is, the things that people think I took liberties with are absolutely true.

Q: What's Phenix City like now?

A: A bedroom community of Columbus. The old red light district has been razed. They've done their best to eradicate the memory of what the town was.

In some ways, I wish people in Phenix City would embrace the town's past, the way they did with Tombstone. It could be a draw for tourists. But even though it seems like a long time ago, it's still too fresh in the minds of people who were there and are still living. They don't want any reminders that Phenix City was once this wicked town.

Q: How'd your family react to the book?

A: I let my mother read it, and she said so many of the names she remembers hearing over dinner conversations.

Q: Is there a lesson in the town's story?

A: We have this kind of funny view of the 1950s —- we see it as this Ozzie and Harriet golden age. People are always saying, "Why can't things be like they were back in the '50s?" Truth is, I don't think anything can touch the danger and violence and depravity of Phenix City. People who talk about the '50s as this idyllic time, they need a history lesson.