The Axeman's Jazz by Ray Celestin

The Axeman's Jazz

Ray Celestin

Yes there's a good cop and a bad cop, you suspect that the young Lewis Armstrong finding his jazz voice will feel like tokenism, you always know the modest heroine will nail the big baddy, that New Orleans will suffer one of its catastrophic inundations, and that the Axeman will have some moral justification. But it never feels like formula; every element has an authentic, historical, dynamic pulse in the perfect storm of a jazz thriller.

Extract
Luca hung up and headed back to the records room. He took the file for the venture company out again and reread it, staring at the names once more. A series of events formed in his mind: a group of people wanted to get hold of an estate, so they used Maria Tenebre, the local drunk, as a proxy. She bought the estate. They waited a few months, then threw her off a bridge.
Parallels
  • The Scornful Moon by Maurice Gee
  • The Strings of Murder by Oscar de Muriel
  • Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes