Putnam
April 2009
On Sale: April 2, 2009
Featuring: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle; Dashiell Hammett
368 pages ISBN: 0399155368 EAN: 9780399155369 Hardcover Add to Wish List
From the critically acclaimed, award-nominated author
comes a new noir crime classic about one of the most
notorious trials in American history.
Critics
called Ace Atkins’s Wicked City “gripping, superb”
(Library Journal), “stunning” (The Tampa
Tribune), “terrific” (Associated Press), “riveting”
(Kirkus Reviews), “wicked good” (Fort Worth
Star-Telegram), and “Atkins’ best novel” (The
Washington Post). But Devil’s Garden is something
else again.
San Francisco, September 1921:
Silent-screen comedy star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle is
throwing a wild party in his suite at the St. Francis Hotel:
girls, jazz, bootleg hooch . . . and a dead actress named
Virginia Rappe. The D.A. says it was Arbuckle who killed
her—crushing her under his weight—and brings him up on
manslaughter charges. William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers
stir up the public and demand a guilty verdict. But what
really happened? Why do so many people at the party seem to
have stories that conflict? Why is the prosecution hiding
witnesses? Why are there body parts missing from the
autopsied corpse? Why is Hearst so determined to see Fatty
Arbuckle convicted?
In desperation, Arbuckle’s
defense team hires a Pinkerton agent to do an investigation
of his own and, they hope, discover the truth. The agent’s
name is Dashiell Hammett, and he’s the book’s narrator. What
he discovers will change American legal history—and his own
life—forever.
“The historical accuracy isn’t what
elevates Atkins’ prose to greatness,” said The Tampa
Tribune. “It’s his ability to let these characters
breathe in a way that few authors could ever imagine. He
doesn’t so much write them as unleash them upon the page.”
You will not soon forget the extraordinary characters and
events in Devil’s Garden.
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