AUTHOR: David Fulmer
I read the first Valentin St. Cyr mystery a dozen years ago and meant to read this soon thereafter, but other books claimed my attention, and I didn't get to this until now. Which does not mean I didn't find the first compelling. I loved it, and in reading this sequel, I fell in love with Valentin all over again. A Creole detective who usually passes for white in 1908 New Orleans, Valentin is coaxed by Jelly Roll Morton (one of the cast of characters based on real people) into investigating the deaths of two jass (as jazz was called back then) musicians. At first, Valentin is skeptical that there's a connection, but when a third musician is found dead, a pattern emerges. The more he investigates, the more pushback he receive from a local police lieutenant and from Valentin's boss Tom Anderson, the politically connected "King of Storyville," the district where prostitution was legal.
Fulmer has a way of bringing both his characters and early-20th Century New Orleans to life. That I figured out one part of the puzzle before it was revealed just made the resolution of the mystery more satisfying for me.
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