Atlantic City, AC, New Jersey’s fun city, the “Las Vegas of the East Coast” and of course the Boardwalk Empire. Who doesn’t know 1920s Prohibition-era Atlantic City from the HBO series? Just in case you don’t then do read Nelson Johnson’s book that was the inspiration for the TV show Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City (2001) and the tale of the incredible Enoch “Nucky” Johnson and his partnership of local politicians and racketeers all profiting from the seaside location’s gambling rooms, bars and brothels. For the more intellectually criminally-minded among you there is also Boardwalk Empire and Philosophy: Bootleg This Book (2013) by editors Richard Greene and Rachel Robinson-Greene which analyses the great origin story of Atlantic City through the philosophical choices the characters are forced to make and the philosophically interesting situations they find themselves in. Invariably ambiguous, Nucky as Machiavelli, where does it all fit in with the American dream (after all a certain two-time US President won big and then lost bigger on investment in the AC)?
Some have called New Jersey set crime – “Turnpike Noir”. I guess that would include AC? Let’s roll the dice and see what tales turn up…..
Atlantic City’s slightly sleezy reputation has stuck a long time now. Murder Under the Boards (2013) by Christopher Pinto is the third in the Bill Riggins Mystery Series. Set in AC in 1957 it’s a noir style murder mystery with a ghost story subplot (Pinto series is based on paranormal detecting). A crazed murderer is at loose under the Atlantic City boardwalk but there’s something distinctly ghostlike about it all.
Roger Hobbs’s Ghostman (2013) is a lot of what you expect out of an Atlantic City crime book – casinos and the heists they inspire. So, when a casino robbery in Atlantic City goes horribly wrong there’s trouble all over town and a “clean up man” is called in. One heister dead in the parking lot, another winged but on the run, the shooter a complete mystery, the $1.2 million in freshly printed bills god knows where and the FBI already waiting at the airport. Ghostman is the first novel featuring the character Jack White. There’s a second Vanishing Games (2015), that takes Jack off to Kuala Lumpur and Macao.
Caitlin Mullen’s psychological thriller Please See Us (2020) was the winner of the 2021 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. It’s late summer on the AC boardwalk and two Jane Does are laid out in the marshland behind the Sunset Motel, just west of town. The only people who seem to know anything about are Clara, a young boardwalk psychic, and Lily, an ex-Soho art gallery girl who is working at a desolate casino spa and reeling from a personal tragedy. Being an Edgar winner indicates this is really worth reading.
Those who write series have often popped down to Atlantic City….
- Janet Evanovich’s (a South River, New Jersey girl BTW) super popular and long running (31 books in total) Stephanie Plum series has made a few semi-regular stops in Atlantic City. Plum is of course famously from Trenton, New Jersey, a town she has mixed feelings about, and the series is largely set in Trenton, where former lingerie saleswoman Stephanie works as a bounty hunter for her cousin Vinnie. In Plum Lucky (2008) Stephanie Plum is looking to get lucky in an Atlantic City hotel room with a guy who has stolen her heart while Stephanie’s Grandma Mazur is losing a lot at the tables. Things of course go wrong, Stephanie needs to sort it all out and, as this is Atlantic City and not Trenton, there’s a lot of all-you-can-eat buffets and shrimp cocktail. Stephanie, like most New Jerseyites, makes a few repeat visits to Atlantic City – in Top Secret Twenty-One (2015) chasing a wanted criminal to the AC to collect her bounty payment. There’s also a side trip to the AC in Four to Score (1998) and Hard Eight (2003). So why not just read the whole series – they’re all good and, if you also watch the Sopranos from start to finish, you get free citizenship of the State of New Jersey apparently?
- Elle Cosimano’s single mum and struggling crime writer Finlay Donovan series sees Finlay and her nanny/partner-in-crime Vero on a girls’ weekend away to Atlantic City. Great – the bad news is there’s been a kidnapping, their hotel is sleezy, her ex-husbands hassling her and the kids are throwing a tantrum. Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice (2024) is the fourth in a five-book series that’s got plenty of New Jersey gal attitude.
- Jane Rubino’s Cat Austen/Victor Cardenas Mysteries – Death of a DJ, Fruitcake and Cheat the Devil (all 2013) feature Cat Austen, an AC cop’s widow with six overly-protective older brothers (five cops and one priest). Now she’s investigating crimes too – a pair of shock jocks, a corpse donned in a Santa suit and a dead woman draws Cat into conspiracies involving Atlantic City casino moguls, fashion designers and her own brother.
And finally, amazingly I think this is the first mention for the prolific and successful Harlan Coben (himself of the great city of Newark, New Jersey) in a Crime and the City column. But now is the time – so welcome Mr Coben. Stay Close (2012) is a psychological thriller novel set in Atlantic City following three people whose pasts and decisions shape their present lives. Three people are haunted by the disappearance of Stewart Green 17 years earlier in AC: photographer Ray Levine; housewife Megan Pierce; and Detective Broome, who investigated the disappearance and befriended Green’s wife and kids.
The book was adapted into a Netflix miniseries, but the filming locations were in the United Kingdom. Shame, as even though it’s maybe a little run down these days, a little past it’s prime, Atlantic City still has some of the old allure bestowed upon back in the days of Nucky Johnson.
