Jass
(Valentin St. Cyr Storyville Mystery #2)
In a riveting encore to the award-winning mystery Chasing the Devil’s Tail, David Fulmer brings us Jass. Here again is Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr, journeying farther into the bloody netherworld of Storyville, New Orleans, that rowdy red-light district where saloons and dance halls echo with the raw and raucous music they call “jass.”
One musician after another turns up dead and called upon to investigate the gruesome murders, Valentin discovers that all of the victims once played in the same band. Now the only one left alive has gone into hiding.
When a shadowy woman emerges as the key to the mystery, Valentin’s attempt to find her touches nerves. Soon the police, the mayor, and even Tom Anderson—the notorious “King of Storyville”—want him off the case. But their efforts only convince him that something larger and darker lurks at the heart of this sordid business. Will he risk everything to get to the truth?
Indeed, this is a tale of dark secrets that lurk in the shadows of the New Orleans night, under the painted faces of the sporting girls, and especially behind the loud, wild music that echoes up the scarlet streets.
Praise
“Music is the pulsating idiom of David Fulmer’s hot-blooded ‘Jass,’ the sequel to ‘Chasing the Devil's Tail’ and another voyeuristic tour of Storyville, New Orleans’s red-light district during its heyday at the turn of the 20th century. Fulmer’s dialogue adds its lyric voice to the gut-bucket sounds and ragtime rhythms pouring out of the bars and up from the streets.”
—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times
“I have read few books of intrigue and action—that genre defining the term page-turner—as richly written as David Fulmer's ‘Jass.’ This tale of murder is populated with some of the most perfectly defined characters any writer could hope to create. Fulmer is a story-teller, yes, but he is also a gifted word-maker and that matters.”
—Terry Kay, author of To Dance with the White Dog
“Fulmer cares about jazz and shows its birth in a corrupt, violent, bigoted world, but music is only one element in a broad canvas that includes politics, poverty, prejudice, crime, drugs, voodoo and the interaction between the city’s rich and the women of color who became their mistresses.”
—The Washington Post
“Shamus-winner Fulmer’s moody follow-up to Chasing the Devil’s Tail uses spare but evocative prose to create an atmosphere steeped in ragtime, bourbon, and the institutional corruption for which the Big Easy is notorious. The author skillfully builds on the emotional aftermath of the first novel, providing plenty of demons to wrestle.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Again vividly evoking the early days of jazz in turn-of-the-century New Orleans. The palpable ambience develops naturally out of the very real interaction between character and place.”
—Booklist
“In his second outing, author Fulmer is in fine form. The city and culture he portrays are as rich and dark as its coffee. With language that can get as rough as his characters, he paints a realistic picture of one of this country’s most famous underworlds—and the beginnings of its greatest indigenous art.”
—The Boston Globe
“In his absorbing ‘Jass,’ David Fulmer skillfully tells a memorable tale while creating a fascinating, three-dimensional portrait of the New Orleans demimonde of almost a century ago, just after the birth of the music first called jass.”
—The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Jass is a fascinating and authentic account of Storyville: its mystery and misery; its danger and decadence; and that sinful new music finding its roots. This is a murder mystery with history at its heart—as heady a New Orleans mix as a pitcher of absinthe. Drink it in."
—Christine Wiltz, author of The Last Madam
Jass is published by Crescent City Books.