Lenox Square was quite a place in December 1985.
Long before anyone could conceive of online shopping and after the death of the downtown department stores, Lenox Square mall was the epicenter of the holiday season in Atlanta. Anchored by Rich’s and Macy’s and my mother’s personal favorite, Neiman Marcus (clerks often recognized my mother with a bright “Hello, Mrs. Atkins!”), Lenox was the biggest mall in Atlanta, and arguably the best. Sometimes I’d join her for lunch—I was fifteen in 1985—at the restaurant in Neiman Marcus or nearby at the Magic Pan, a very eighties chain that served fresh crepes in every style imaginable.
The mall displays were epic, no corner left undecorated with glittering lights, fluffy fake snow, miles of ornamented garland, and giant wreaths. Santa had a massive village by a gigantic tree in the center of the mall that seemed to break through its tall glass ceiling. And this Santa had a real beard, almost unheard of at the time. Wham!’s “Last Christmas” and “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by the joined forces of Band Aid played from the PA system. Shoppers in mullets and poodle perms dressed in ugly sweaters—very fashionable at the time before their ironic resurgence decades later—bustled about the Polo shop and a new store called Banana Republic.
As my mother toiled away hours of holiday shopping, I was left to explore on my own. There were two record shops and a Sharper Image with the latest high-tech gadgets. That year, the Sharper Image sold gizmos inspired by A View to a Kill, the latest James Bond film. Roger Moore vs. an evil Christopher Walken. I liked to visit the Waldenbooks at the far end of the mall to rummage through the newest offerings from Clive Cussler, Len Deighton, or Robert Ludlum.
It was Christmas. But also the Year of the Spy.
A new guy named Gorbachev had just been named the leader of Soviet Russia. In November, he’d met with Reagan for a historic summit in Geneva. The covers of Newsweek and Time, with images of the men shaking hands, filled the bookstore windows in the mall.
Instead of just finding a quiet place to read something akin to A Matter of Honor by Jeffrey Archer (a terrific thriller about enemy agents romping across Europe searching for a mysterious Russian icon that came out in 1986), my Walter Mitty mode went into high gear, turning Lenox into a real, living, breathing hotbed of Soviet spies. Surely there were spies milling about the gigantic Christmas tree and display, passing secret information in a big Rich’s bag on escalators or on the twin glass elevators heading down into the food court and massive video game arcade.
Photo: courtesy of ace atkins
A family photo of the author reading at home.
This world was as busy and exciting as any holiday market in West Berlin.
This is where and when my interest in reading spy novels turned me into an aspiring spy novelist. If Ian Fleming was inspired by exotic locales, I was equally inspired by people and places I saw at Lenox.
At the time, the mall was a haphazard mess architecturally, bound by its 1950s layout, with countless hidden doorways leading to stairwells under the mall where you’d find offices and storerooms. If you were a kid at the time, you might even find a suspicious character or two to follow about the mall. A shady man in a homburg hat had to be a Soviet, perhaps an East German passing along information about Reagan’s Star Wars program. A woman in a conspicuous blonde wig carrying a distinctive handbag might be a double agent.
Casing the mall was a wonderful exercise for a young writer. And yes, I was lucky I didn’t scare someone or get arrested.
There was intrigue and excitement. I vividly remember seeing Rocky IV during the 1985 holidays at the Lenox Square movie theater on the giant 70-millimeter screen. A man in front of me got so moved when Rocky began to turn the tables on Ivan Drago that he leapt up, popcorn bucket flying and raining down on the crowd. “God-damn, Rocky! Kick his ass.” Back then, we were all in it together.
No doubt that’s what I missed about the era when I started to think about what would become my thirty-first novel. You’re often told to write what you know. And the memories of being a suburban kid during the Cold War are hard-wired into my brain. I recall every detail.
Forty years later, I didn’t just miss the mall—although the mall encapsulated everything that was the 1980s—I missed the movies, the music, the clothes, the culture. I thought what if there was a kid just like me, living in Atlanta at the same time, who had the same suspicions I did? Only it was all true.
I came up with the story of Peter Bennett, a fourteen-year-old boy from the outlying burbs in Cobb County who is convinced his mother is dating a KGB assassin. By this time, I’d become a fan of the show The Americans, which ran from 2013 to 2018, and researched more about the KGB’s “illegals” program that placed Soviet spies into American neighborhoods. They would act, dress, and live like us. Who was to know?
While writing about Greater Atlanta (the region as described in the Yellow Pages), I recalled Sparkles, a popular roller-skating rink, and even an ill-fated “teens only” nightclub called Kicks where you could meet up with pals and dance to Duran Duran, A-ha, and Michael Jackson. Kicks, it turns out, was the absolute perfect place for the child of Russian spies to make strategic inroads with kids whose parents had top-secret clearance.
I know this all sounds like the crazy fever dream of a kid who watched Red Dawn a few too many times. But when I started to write what would become Everybody Wants to Rule the World, I reached out to my friend, Frank Figliuzzi, who had once been assistant director of counterintelligence at the FBI. He started his career as a rookie agent in Atlanta. In the eighties!
Although he did not divulge still-classified operations, Frank did confirm to me that Atlanta was a hotbed of Soviet action during that time. Lockheed Martin, Dobbins Air Force Base, and numerous companies with Department of Defense contracts were the targets.
I had my story. And I had to write it.
Many of the 1980s Atlanta locations in my book are long gone: the restaurant and club Dante’s Down the Hatch, with its wonderful nautical-themed interior and moat filled with real crocodiles; the infamous Limelight disco pulsing with electronic dance music and hot neon; Stein Club lined with personal mugs for their local clientele and a killer jukebox. Many others remain: the Majestic Diner, the Varsity, Nikolai’s Roof (a Russia-themed restaurant high atop the downtown Hilton), and George’s Bar and Restaurant. George’s was the Virginia-Highlands hangout for a wonderful but forgotten crime novelist, the late Ralph Dennis.
Dennis was the model for my character Dennis X. Hotchner, who wrote lurid, and largely fictional, tales of SOVIET SPIES NEXT DOOR for men’s pulp magazines in the eighties. Hotchner’s best friend is a former Atlanta Falcons linebacker turned drag queen—in the age of RuPaul’s rise in Atlanta’s drag shows—who performs under the name Jackie Demure and can do a mean Tina Turner. “We Don’t Need Another Hero!”
Hotch and Jackie end up helping Peter on his quest to find out the truth in ’85. One of my favorite scenes in the novel involves a breakout from a secret KGB interrogation below the mall.
Much like Marty McFly, I was able to return to 1985 by way of 2025, to the Atlanta I remembered. One of the highlights for me while writing was stepping back into worlds unchanged, like the honeycombed interior of John Portman’s iconic downtown Hyatt, or a wonderful dinner at Nikolai’s Roof at the next-door Hilton. Although the waiters no longer dress as Cossacks, the off-menu flavored vodka is still available and highly recommended. One of my major scenes takes place there.
All of this started with entertaining myself during long holiday hours at Lenox Square with my late mother, Doris. At the time, I would never have guessed I would one day be nostalgic for the over-the-top commercialism of a 1980s mall Christmas, with its colorful lights, pop music, and bustling crowds.
Everyone has a time and a place that’s so clear-cut in their memory that they never ever leave it. 1985 was a wonderful time to be alive when Atlanta, America, and the world seemed destined for better and greater things. After years of living under MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction—a simple handshake in chilly Geneva for a brief moment made it seem possible to a fourteen-year-old kid that they could actually play a part to help tip the scales towards peace on earth. We were almost there.
Everybody Wants to Rule the World is out this week. Find it here.
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Ace Atkins is an award-winning, New York Times best-selling author who started his writing career as a crime beat reporter in Florida. Don’t Let the Devil Ride is his thirtieth novel. His previous novels include eleven books in the Quinn Colson series and multiple true-crime novels based on infamous crooks and killers. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his family.
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