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 Atkinsโs Wicked City โgripping, superbโ (Library Journal), โstunningโ (The Tampa Tribune), โterrificโ (Associated Press), โrivetingโ (Kirkus Reviews), โwicked goodโ (Fort Worth Star-Telegram), and โAtkinsโ best novelโ (The Washington Post). But Devilโs Garden is something else again.
San Francisco, September 1921: Silent-screen comedy star Roscoe โFattyโ 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 herโcrushing her under his weightโand brings him up on manslaughter charges. William Randolph Hearstโs 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, Arbuckleโs defense team hires a Pinkerton agent to do an investigation of his own and, they hope, discover the truth. The agentโs name is Dashiell Hammett, and heโs the bookโs narrator. What he discovers will change American legal historyโand his own lifeโforever.
โThe historical accuracy isnโt what elevates Atkinsโ prose to greatness,โ said The Tampa Tribune. โItโs his ability to let these characters breathe in a way that few authors could ever imagine. He doesnโt so much write them as unleash them upon the page.โ You will not soon forget the extraordinary characters and events in Devilโs Garden.
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