Boom! This is Books & Biceps #388!

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Atlanta Deathwatch by Ralph Dennis

You know what’s awesome? When we interview a New York Times bestselling author in Books & Biceps and we stay in touch and he recommends a book series that he thinks our readers will love.

In this case, I’m talking about Ace Atkins, whose B&B interview about his new book, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, you can read here. After the interview came out, Ace wrote me and said that since I loved the Spenser series by Robert B. Parker, I’d definitely enjoy the Hardman series by Ralph Dennis.

Until Ace mentioned him, I’d never heard of Ralph Dennis. And this was kind of the point. Dennis was a crime writer of “hardboiled fiction”, a genre that often involved a rogue detective, violence and organized crime fifty years ago. Our kind of genre. He wrote twelve books in the series and they came out between 1974 and 1979 to moderate commercial success (with cult status among writers). All the books centered on ex-cop Jim Hardman and his partner, Hump, a former pro football player.

Hardman is white and Hump is black, which plays into the hard-hitting, real, absolutely zero PC 1970s writing style you’ll enjoy from Dennis. His narration is straight tell-it-like-it-is from Hardman (your feelings and the feelings of modern readers be damned).

Having dealt with a few modern sensitive editors, I could only laugh while reading this, thinking what they’d say if they saw this manuscript today. Ha! But all of that is secondary to strong characters, a quick-moving story, sharp dialogue and a knack for good storytelling and exceptional one-liners.

The first book in the series is called Atlanta Deathwatch, so that’s where I decided to start and I’m having a great time so far. Hardman’s a slick dude, but not too slick, that’s why he needs Hump. But he does have a knack for classic, detective quips:

“Call The Man and tell him Hardman’s here and wants to ask some questions, but you don’t feel like answering them.”

I love dialogue like this. Shows the swagger of the character. Leaves mystery about who The Man is. Gives the reader the knowledge that the main character has done this once or twice. A little humor. Just strong work by Dennis.

The book follows Hardman, who gets hired by a black gangster, to investigate the murder of his white girlfriend. It takes him from the seediest parts of Atlanta right up to the seat of power. The book’s only a couple hundred pages and flies by in the best way. Check it out here.

I’ve been watching the digging/construction of our town’s new aquatics center for almost two years now with lots of swimming dork anticipation.

The old pool we swam in was fine, but it was on the other side of town, almost fifteen minutes away, and the pool itself had seen better days. The locker room was worn down, the filtration was meh, and facility had become dated and couldn’t host meets.

This new pool, though. Damn! First, it’s about a mile from my house, which worked out perfectly for me. Second, the pool itself is state of the art. I feel like I’m training for the Olympics at practice. Look at this from Wednesday night:

Pristine conditions, right? It’s 50M with a bulkhead that can drop it to 25 yards or 25M short course. The water is the clearest I’ve swum in. I love it.

At our first practice back we did sets of sprints in blocks of 400.

16 × 25s / 8 × 50s / 4 × 100s / 2 × 200 / 1 × 400

A clean 2,000 main set. Loved it.

If you’re a guy over 40 and you’ve been looking for a new digital magazine that’s written for midlife men, by midlife men, on the topics that actually matter to us: family, fitness, fashion, finance, food & fun, then join us at Midlife Male.

I’m the Editor-in-Chief and I write a column every Tuesday called The Manologue. This week I tackled a topic I’ve quietly heard lots of people talking about: ditching fitness technology. I wrote about my own recent experience, where I took one of my favorite parts of my day, my morning walk with my dog, and entirely screwed it up by trying to “optimize” it. Tons of people writing me about this so far. Read it and let me know what you think:

That’s how dominant 'Nique was.

Back in his peak in the 1980s and early 90s he’d have three or four "did you see that!?!?!?" dunks and about thirty points every single night.

But he was more than the highlights and the stats. He had sponsorships with Reebok and Gatorade and Minute Maid. He was a 9x All-Star, 7x All-NBA Team member & Hall of Famer. He was a superstar.

Lunch room arguments would break out about who was a better dunker.

‘Nique or Jordan?

Jordan or ‘Nique?

Was a windmill swung down to your ankles harder than a foul line dunk?

Was it more explosive to jump off two feet or one?

Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins were like the McDonald’s and Burger King of our dunking universe for a solid decade…and yet we seem to have slowly and collectively begun to only remember the Jordan half of the equation.

When I started researching this project I got in touch with Spud Webb, Wilkins’ dunking rival and longtime Hawks teammate and friend, to get his take on Dominique’s legacy and he summed it up best.

“It’s amazing that people act like they’ve never seen anyone in the 80s and 90s play other than MJ,” he said. “People need to bring up Dominique. Dominique was an all-time scorer. He never got his credit.”

Exactly!

I’ve wanted to write about the Human Highlight Film’s highlights from the first time I saw his highlights on film. I’ve even had that sentence stowed away in a notebook for about eight years. And I’m damn glad to finally use it.

From ‘Nique’s legendary high school games to his bulldozing of the SEC at Georgia to his FIVE dunk contests to his duels with Jordan and Larry Bird and even his late-career EuroLeague Championship and Final Four MVP and beyond, enjoy this digital, illustrated biography of the electric, incomparable Dominique Wilkins.

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