FICTION

"Wicked City" by Ace Atkins. Putnam Adult. 352 pages. $24.95.

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Bottom line: Gritty Phenix City —- who'd a thunk it?

If someone asked you to list our nation's most wicked spots, you'd probably start with D.C. or L.A., Las Vegas or New York.

Somewhere urban. Somewhere gritty.

But in 1955, Look Magazine named Phenix City, Ala. —- a little Columbus, Ga., suburb on the Chattahoochee River —- the "Wickedest City in America."

In the years following World War II, a motley band of thugs known as the Machine turned Phenix City into a sinners' paradise, replete with gamblers, whores and moonshiners. The Machine played with loaded dice and marked cards. They lured country girls into prostitution with promises of a glamorous life in town. And when the Fort Benning soldiers, Atlanta businessmen and Auburn frat boys who made up the bulk of their clientele got out of line, they slit their throats and threw them in the Chattahoochee.

Finally, in 1954, the men of the Machine went too far: They gunned down the state's newly elected attorney general, John Patterson, who'd run on an anti-vice platform.

Patterson's murder opens Ace Atkins' latest novel, "Wicked City." From there, he traces the downfall of the Machine and the restoration of Phenix City, blending history and fiction, real people and invented characters.

It's Atkins' second 1950s true-crime novel. His first, the well-received "White Shadow," was set in Tampa, where he once worked as a newspaper reporter. This one brings him closer to home. Atkins grew up about 20 minutes from Phenix City, though by then it had turned into a sleepy burg. One of his grandfathers ran moonshine; the other did occasional dirty work for scandal-plagued Gov. James "Big Jim" Folsom.

"Wicked City's" hero is the real-life Lamar Murphy, a retired boxer and Texaco station owner who is appointed sheriff soon after the governor sends in the National Guard and a special investigator.

Along with a handful of other honest men, Murphy seeks Patterson's killers, smashing stills and slot machines along the way. The bad guys won't go down without a fight, though, and so the body count mounts in an ever-escalating series of raids, ambushes and gun battles.

The book whips along at a fast clip, but it lacks cohesiveness. At times, it reads more like a collection of action sequences than a true novel. Perhaps that's because Atkins is borrowing heavily from real life, and real life is messier than fiction. Perhaps it's also because his characters seem cut from the same cloth and tend to blur together.

But if the characters aren't all as well-developed as they might be, they do speak in wonderfully colorful and wholly believable ways. Atkins' ear for good-ol'-boy dialogue is pitch-perfect, though most of what they say can't be printed here.

This is a profane, violent book, filled with people who talk and fight dirty. Think Deadwood moved to 1950s Alabama.

As in most westerns, women don't play much of a role. Atkins gives us a teenage prostitute in need of rescue; a bland, good-hearted wife; and a villainous madam who spends most of her on-page time swishing her bottom or sunbathing topless. His is a man's world.

Still, it's an entertaining read, with an evocative style and distinct sense of place. And it's all the more fascinating for being authentic. We may associate evil with the big city, but it lurks in places small and large. Even, still, in Phenix City. Last month, police there arrested Courtney Lockhart, the alleged killer of Auburn University student Lauren Burk, following a traffic stop.