Crossroad Blues (Nick Travers)

“In Atkins’ hands, the characters are as substantial as a down home breakfast of biscuits and ham with red-eye gravy.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Crossroad Blues is a riot of Johnson lore, driven by the sort of stories generations of blues researchers would have sacrificed their children and parents to nail down.”—Greil Marcus, Interview magazine

“One of the best crime writers at work today.”—Michael Connelly

This is the tenth anniversary edition, featuring bonus material from the author and a never-before-published Nick Travers story.

Sixty years after 1930s bluesman Robert Johnson—who, as legend has it, sold his soul to the devil at a Mississippi crossroads—was murdered after a gig at a Greenwood, Mississippi, juke joint, a college professor following rumors of nine unknown Johnson recordings goes missing in the Delta. Ex–New Orleans Saint-turned-Tulane University blues historian Nick Travers is sent to find him. Clues point to everyone from an eccentric albino named Cracker to a seventeen-year-old hitman who believes he is the second coming of Elvis Presley.

A modern, Southern reinvention of The Maltese Falcon, Crossroad Blues impressed noir fans with its nod to the masters Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and intrigued blues lovers with its meticulous attention to detail. But most of all, with richly drawn characters, a tight plot, and snappy dialogue, Crossroad Blues is a timeless story told well.

A former Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist, Ace Atkins is the best-selling author of seven novels, including Devil’s Garden (Putnam, April 2009).