'The Axeman's Jazz' by Ray Celestin

Published by Mantle,
8 May 2014.
ISBN 978-1-4472-5886-5 (HB)

This is New Orleans in 1919.  It is not exactly The Big Easy but a powder keg of racial tension, extreme weather, and organised crime into which a frightening criminal enters to kill a number of victims.  The Axeman was a real serial killer in 1919 who committed a number of murders which suddenly stopped and his identity has never been established.  Ray Celestin builds up the frenetic atmosphere of New Orleans in the era after the First World War.  He has three very different individuals attempting to solve the mystery of the killer.  He uses an actual incident - the publication of a letter purporting to be from the Axeman which threatens to kill on a particular night victims who are not playing jazz!

The three investigators are the official investigator,  Detective Lieutenant Michael Talbot, who is under pressure to stop the murders; Ida Davis, a nineteen year old mixed race secretary at Pinkertons Detective Agency assisted by a young cornet player, Louis Armstrong; and former detective Luca d'Andrea, who has just been released from Angola state penitentiary after serving a sentence for corruption, he is working for the Mafia.  Each of the investigators has an axe to grind, a personal situation that dictates their actions, secrets that they must protect.

The three investigations mesh together beautifully and the story reaches a rip roaring finale. 
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Reviewer: Jennifer S. Palmer

Ray Celestin studied Asian art and languages at university He is novelist and screenwriter. His debut novel, The Axeman’s Jazz (2014), won the CWA New Blood Award for best debut crime novel of the year, and was featured on numerous ‘Books of the Year’ lists. His follow-up, Dead Man’s Blues (2016), won the Historia Historical Thriller of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for a number of other awards. The novels are part of a series – ‘The City Blues Quartet’ – which charts the twin histories of jazz and the mob through the middle 50 years of the twentieth century. He lives in London.