The Redeemers

One of Ace Atkins’ Quinn Colson books is a strange place to discuss the concept of the “cozy”, epitomized by Agatha Christie’s mysteries set in small English villages. Colson’s Jericho, Mississippi isn’t as quaint and everything-just-so as an English village, in fact in some ways it’s the opposite. It’s desperately poor, there’s no sense of a benign upper class leading the way and looking out for others, the powers-that-be are mostly corrupt, and a lot of its people are never more than a paycheck away from desperation. But there’s a social fabric. Quinn Colson’s blue-collar family and friends hold each other up. There’s a sense of continuity and togetherness in their lives, and part of the enjoyment of these novels is Atkins carefully putting the pieces in place for this over the first four books of the series, following Colson’s return from service as a Ranger in Afghanistan. The family is reunited. Colson finds love. He settles into the century-old family farm. In this book, Atkins blows it all up, right at the beginning. In the intervening year since the last episode, we learn, Colson has been ousted at the polls as sheriff by a candidate backed by Colson’s nemesis, corrupt county supervisor and local strongman Johnny Stagg. Colson’s sister Caddy, who had left the street life to settle down and raise her biracial son, has fallen apart again after the killing of her preacher boyfriend. Colson has to bloody an axe handle rescuing her from the slums of Memphis, and it’s all the family can do to talk her into going to rehab. And Colson, who had been following a gradual and promising road to romance with local businesswoman Ophelia Bundren, has ditched her to resume a long-smoldering passion for childhood sweetheart Anna Lee Stevens. Who is married to Colson’s childhood friend Luke Stevens, now the town’s doctor. Who has found out about it and left her and their daughter. Word of which has gotten around and created a classic small-town scandal. And none of Colson’s people are real happy with her; they fear she’ll wreck Colson’s life. So, there’s no comfort zone here. It’s cold and New Year is coming up, with Colson to be ejected unceremoniously from office at 12:01 am, the earliest legal minute. What shall he do with his life? Farm with his father Jason, who has returned to town and their lives? Return to the Rangers and Afghanistan, maybe become an instructor? His friends advise him to leave town. There\’s nothing good in Jericho. But that would mean leaving Anna . . . Meanwhile local lowlifes plot to rip off the dirty money stash of one of Stagg’s crooked business buddies. Their comic redneck foulness as they try to crack a safe is reminiscent of Carl Hiaasen. After each scene with them you want to take a shower. But the chaos they cause upsets some powers that be – dangerous ones, even more so than Stagg himself. And Colson gets sucked back in. There’s a lot I like about this series. Atkins somehow makes his fictional place appealing despite the poverty, the trashiness of the local bad guys, and the tiredness of a land logged until flat and farmed until dead. There’s no gentry in sight. Everyone else is some variant of country and/or redneck, but they come in all the shades of good and evil and everything between. It sort of dawned on me how, by the grace of God, the US Army and his Elvis-loving momma, Quinn Colson has avoided becoming trailer trash, which he easily could have become. His father, while not bad, is shiftless and way too full of stories of all the women he had while a Hollywood stunt man. His sister, marked by a childhood trauma that lurks in back of all these stories, has fallen off the deep end of life more than once. Few people Colson knows have very much, and of those, many have come by it dishonestly. But what he’s got is character. The character that got him through the rigors of being a Ranger. The character that made him refuse Johnny Stagg’s bribes. The character that helped him uphold the law as sheriff. The character that keeps him from being a major skirt-chaser. The character that has kept him fighting an often thankless battle to defend the town he grew up in and the people he grew up with. The character that doesn’t back down from a fight that needs to be fought, like the one that bloodies that axe handle. At the end of the day, the Quinn Colson series suggests, character isn’t where you come from. It’s where you end up.

I have enjoyed the previous Quinn Colson novels & this one was just OK. It took a looooooong time to get going & I almost quit reading it but after getting thru 3/4 of it I wanted to finish it. The action-ending was quite good but the middle just sagged. Lots of blather from the good ole boys & yeah it;\’s cute sometimes & \”atmospheric\” but there was just too much of it here. Lots of spinning tires going nowhere fast. The side story of Caddy & her addiction seemed tacked on until the very end and then it felt unrealistic. I have ordered the next in this series because he\’s earned my loyalty with his earlier works but I sure hope it moves faster than this book does. Felt like he was milking the story line & didn;t quite know where to go with it. Had to make myself pick it up & keep reading & that\’s not what I want in a suspense/mystery book. Worth it to keep up with the plot & character lines but, again, hope the next one is better.

Ace Atkins offers \”The Redeemers\” as the fifth in his signature series featuring Quinn Colson. Colson is a former Army Ranger who returned from the dangers of warfare on the international front to face warlike dangers as sheriff in his hometown of Jericho in Tibbeh County, Mississippi. Johnny Stagg, Colson\’s nemesis and local power broker, has succeeded in getting Quinn voted out of office and, he hopes, neutralized as an opponent of his corrupt plans. But loyal readers know that Quinn will not leave until he settles accounts with Stagg. A revenge seeker arranges for several opportunists to break into the home of Larry Cobb, a political and corrupt friend of Johnny Stagg, to steal over a million in cash and personal valuables. Unfortunately, the safe also contains proof of Stagg\’s corruption within his illegal empire and, equally unfortunately, the thieves are neither very bright nor very loyal. While Cobb and Stagg move furiously to regain the contents of the safe, Quinn, at the request of Lillie Virgil (his longtime loyal deputy) and the Cobb family, is busy working with an informant to shut down Stagg\’s evil empire once and for all. Several lingering story lines and characters from past Colson novels head toward an electrifying confrontation that may or may not decide the fate of The Ranger and Jericho, Mississippi. As usual, readers are reminded of the quality touches that Atkins brings to his work. \”The Redeemers\” is an authentic, fast paced thriller with well- fleshed characters and believable dialogue all staged deep in the backwaters of rural Mississippi. Atkins continues his subplots regarding Quinn\’s estranged father, addicted sister, and his on-again, off-again romances. All in all, The Quinn Colson series is a compelling, well-written series that should appeal to fans of southern suspense/thrillers.

Just finished the fifth installment of the Quinn Colson series by Ace Atkins, “The Redeemers” {2015}. There are eight books in the oeuvre and I have read them mostly in order…with just 2016’s “The Innocents” and this year’s “The Sinners” to go. Atkins is a remarkable storyteller and his writing is addictive. Parts of “The Redeemers” I read as fast as possible in an attempt to keep up with the momentum…other parts I forced myself to slow down and savor every phrase and nuance. It is easy to appreciate the style and panache of his prose and admire Colson and all the heroes and villains that populate the series. If you have yet to discover the impressive adventures of Quinn Colson…there is no time like the present.

The fifth novel in Ace Atkins’ Quinn Colson series is the closest the author has come to emulating one of his writing heroes – Elmore Leonard. The story is populated with the type of characters Leonard employed in many of his crime novels set in the modern west. The plot itself is slight, being centred around a robbery, but the character interaction, double-crossing and the bigger picture of Colson’s mission to put Johnny Stagg behind bars keep the pages turning. Atkins has a great handle on his characters and embellishes them through their salty dialogue. Whilst the plot itself reaches a conclusion, some of the domestic threads that have ran through the series are left loose. there is also a signal in the series taking a change of direction in its final pages. Another strong addition to an excellent series.

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