Jay Atkinson’s Novel ‘Storrow Drive’ Is Getting Pulled Over by Readers

I’m always glad to see a new book by my Merrimack Valley Conference literary comrade Jay Atkinson, in his case a former Ranger from Methuen High School who was a scholar-athlete in college in Nova Scotia. Jay is still in the area and teaches at Boston University. He has since written a gazillion words in five narrative nonfiction books and five works of fiction. Two of his books made bestseller lists, Ice Time (about hometown hockey) and Legends of Winter Hill (Boston crime tales). For his colonial-era account of Haverhill’s Hannah Duston in Massacre on the Merrimack, the intrepid author got into the river to make it more real. Movie rights operators have been sniffing around his bookshelf for a while.

In the new book, Jay returns to the dodgy corners of Boston with gritty investigative reporter Joe Dolan deciphering mysteries and chasing juicy stories and juicier characters, both cops and robbers–or worse. Chuck Hogan, author of The Town (you remember the story set in Charlestown and movie with Ben Affleck and the weird nun masks)–Chuck Hogan mentions Dolan in the same breath as Robert B. Parker’s private eye Spenser as a memorable Boston character.

Prize-winning journalist Lou Ureneck gives readers a head’s up about what to expect on the Boston scene in his review: “It’s definitely not the Freedom Trail.”

If we’ve been in Greater Boston, we’ve all negotiated the real Storrow Drive, which is still a codeword for stall-and-crawl at rush hour and rates that label from traffic helicopter jockeys on AM radio. The traffic in Jay’s Storrow Drive is more in the drug category. But even with the serious stuff there’s comic relief, so don’t worry about relentless darkness here.

If you are in Lowell, you might run into Jay at the Old Court, Brew’d Awakening, Viet-Thai and Life Alive restaurants, or at Kerouac’s marker in Edson Cemetery. Let him know you read his books, any one of them.