[citation needed] While at the Tribune, Atkins earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination for a feature series based on his investigation into a forgotten murder of the 1950s.

In his next novels, Wicked City and Devil's Garden, Atkins continued this kind of story-telling, a style that was compared to that of Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos.

[citation needed] In Devil's Garden, Atkins explores the early life of one of those heroes: Dashiell Hammett, the originator of the hard-boiled crime novel.

As a Pinkerton Agency detective, Hammett investigated the rape and manslaughter case against early Hollywood star Roscoe Arbuckle, one of the most sensational trials of the 20th Century.

[5] Atkins' novel Infamous (2010) is based on the 1933 Charles Urschel kidnapping and subsequent misadventures of the gangster couple George "Machine Gun" and Kathryn Kelly.