Ace Atkins from Auburn talks about barbecue, blues and his new book “Don’t Let the Devil Ride”

Crime writer and Alabama native Ace Atkins got his first taste of Memphis—its soulful music, sinful food and colorful cast of nocturnal characters—on a trip to the Bluff City during his senior year at Auburn University.

Atkins – an Australian Football League football hero who twice sacked Florida quarterback Danny Wuerffel in the Tigers’ decisive win over the Gators earlier this year – had long been a fan of the great songs from Memphis-based Stax Records, but he had never been to the place where they were recorded.

“It must have been December 1993,” Atkins recalls. “It was (after) my graduation banquet at Auburn and just before Christmas break. And I thought to myself, ‘I just have to go to Memphis and see where all this happened.’

“At the time, Stax Records had just been torn down, and the old movie theater where they had done all those recordings with Otis Redding and Sam and Dave and Booker T. & the MGs was just brick, just rubble. They were tearing it down to put in a soup kitchen or something.

“And I got some bricks and some linoleum off the floor and went back to my hotel. It was almost like Stax had disappeared from Memphis.

“I was at my hotel downtown and there was a Christmas parade going on,” Atkins continued. “And I looked down and the Grand Marshal of the Christmas parade was Rufus Thomas.”

“He was so forgotten that I couldn’t believe he was still alive, and here he was the Grand Marshal. And I thought, this is the best place, the greatest city. Rufus Thomas leads the parade, there are great barbecue places downtown, Elvis Presley is here.”

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The prolific Atkins – author of 29 novels, including four from his early Nick Travers series, four true crime novels, 11 from his Quinn Colson series and 10 from Robert B. Parker’s iconic Spenser series – returns to Memphis (circa 2010) for more crime and mischief, as well as some international spy games, in his latest thriller, “Don’t Let the Devil Ride,” out today.

In it, Memphis housewife Addison McKellar hires legendary private investigator Porter Hayes (Atkins’ reference to famous Stax musicians David Porter and Isaac Hayes) to help her find her husband, globetrotting businessman Dean McKellar, who has disappeared without telling his family his whereabouts.

With Porter’s help, Addison soon discovers that Dean McKellar is not only not the man he claimed to be, but that he is also involved in a ruthless conspiracy that would not hesitate to target Addison and her children.

It’s not as dark and heavy as it sounds, though. Like Atkins’ previous novels, Don’t Let the Devil Ride is peppered with plenty of wicked humor throughout.

“I come from the school of thought of people like Elmore Leonard and Charles Portis,” says Atkins. “You have to have a sense of humor to see the absurdities of life.”

“That’s what I really want readers to get out of it,” he adds. “Hopefully when they pick up the book they’ll get a few laughs.”

We spoke with Atkins by phone from his home in Oxford, Mississippi, a few weeks before the release of his new book.

Here are some excerpts from that conversation. Both the questions and answers have been edited for brevity and context.

In an Instagram post, you said this is the most expansive and entertaining story you’ve ever written. Can you elaborate? I mean, it’s certainly sprawling in terms of geography, characters and themes, but tell us why you feel that way.

Well, in the last 10, 11 years, I’ve written two series. One of them was very much my own, set in Mississippi with Quinn Colson. And then I wrote about Boston and wrote for Spenser. And I knew I wanted to write a really big book, and it seemed like now was the right time to do it.

You know, you have these projects that you want to tackle, and I wanted to write something that was very Memphis-esque, but at the same time had a larger, global component.

As much as I love crime novels, as a child I loved spy novels. I read Ian Fleming and John le Carré. That was my introduction to crime fiction.

So I wanted a little bit of espionage… a big, globe-trotting, entertaining, international thriller that happened to be set mostly near Memphis.

So is this something that has been on your mind for some time, even since the Quinn Colson books?

Years ago, I think it was around 2010, my editor, a guy named Neil Nyren, wanted me to start writing a series. He thought it would be good for me to create a series character.

We talked about it and I had two ideas. One of them was set in a very rural area and that became Quinn Colson. And the other idea I had was a very urban story set in Memphis about a private investigator named Porter Hayes. And those were two different paths – kind of like the city mouse versus the country mouse.

What ultimately attracted me was writing about Quinn Colson and about this fictional county in Mississippi, but I always had this character, this detective, Porter Hayes, in my head. I just couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was always there.

When I changed publishers – I went from Putnam to William Morrow – they were very keen for me to write a standalone story and a big, weighty summer thriller. And I just knew that Porter Hayes had to be in it.

The title “Don’t Let the Devil Ride” refers to an old gospel song, which is exactly the kind of music that suits you. What’s the background to that?

It’s funny because when you write a book there’s a lot of discussion about the cover and the title, and we tried a million different titles. I’m not kidding. This is the longest process of all.

When I was revising the manuscript, I can’t remember if Porter or his colleague Deacon Malone said it, but he said, “As the old song goes, Don’t let the devil ride,” an old gospel classic that’s been covered by all sorts of people.

And it just seemed very fitting for the title and seemed very Memphis-like to me.

You live less than an hour from Memphis, so when you go there, it’s not always for research purposes. You still go for fun, right?

The beauty of this book was that it didn’t really require a lot of research. The places that are brought to life in the book are places I’ve been to many times, and in some cases, they don’t even exist anymore.

There was maybe a time when I had to go to the Port of Memphis (for research purposes) to see where they were unloading some things. And the great thing about living here is that I’m at the Port of Memphis in 45 minutes. And I can walk around and see exactly what it looks like.

But no, I’m in Memphis a lot, just for boring reasons, like a doctor’s appointment or a trip to Costco. But also just to eat. There are so many great restaurants in Memphis.

I will look for any excuse to leave Payne’s Bar-B-Q. I ate there a few weeks ago with a friend who is a writer, and I thought, “Is this as good as I remember?” And it was better than I remembered. The sandwich was just phenomenal.

So what do you write next?

I’m in the middle of writing next year’s book, a spy novel. There’s a character who has a connection to Don’t Let the Devil Ride, but it’s definitely not a sequel or anything. It’s just a reference, a kind of twist on the story.

This is my personal take on a classic spy novel. I hope it has the same humorous feel for people who read Don’t Let the Devil Ride and enjoyed the humor in it.

And will we see Porter Hayes more often at some point?

I think so. That’s what I want. I’m finishing up this (other) book that’s coming out next year, and I’d like to go back to the original story I worked on with Porter Hayes, which is set in the 1990s, around the time I first arrived in Memphis.

So you’ll see him as a younger man, about 25 years before the events of Don’t Let the Devil Ride.

What about Quinn Colson? Are there plans to continue this series?

That’s the plan. Some of these things are out of your hands, depending on what the editor wants and what’s going on. But I’d like to go back to both Porter Hayes and Quinn Colson and kind of go back to the original plan from 2010.

These are my two favorite characters that I want to write about, and I want to continue their stories while also writing some standalone works.