Mixing history and fiction is popular lately. Ace Atkins' The Devil's Garden blends fact in fiction in a delicious and dark hard-boiled detective story set in pre-code 1920's Hollywood.
Sam (later to become Dashiel) Hammett is a Pinkerton detective, hired to investigate the famous Fatty Arbuckle. Accused of killing an aspiring actress in a most sordid manner (rape with a Coca-Cola bottle--and this is a true part!), Arbuckle is villified daily by the Los Angeles press.
Hammett wanders through Hollywood's dark guts, interviewing fellow party-goers, trying to sort truth from lies in a city made famous by stories spun for its masses.
Writer Atkins has a great ear for dialogue, and has even included a 1920's Hollywood street map for the reader to follow the action. I was surprised to find so many facts in Atkin's novel: Hammett did work for the Pinkertons, and did, in fact, investigate the Arbuckle case.
But the dialogue is pure Atkins. This is one of those books that should be filmed. Maybe John Goodman as Fatty Arbuckle...
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