David Fulmer
One book that sat for a while on my shelf but aged well was CHASING THE DEVIL'S TAIL by David Fulmer. It is called a mystery of Storyville, New Orleans. Storyville is a section of NO that is definitely not about fairy tales. Rather in 1907 when the tale begins is is a raucous red-light district. This is a time when cocaine is OTC and the whiskey runs like water. The protagonist is a Creole/Italian Valentin St. Cyr an ex-policeman who now works for the political boss of Storyville, Tom Anderson.
At it's heart the mystery is about yet another serial killer of women. (A very worn out plot line IMHO) This killer leaves a black rose by the corpse. Valentin tries to find the killer because everybody would be happy to pin it on his friend jazz great Buddy Bolden, who is slowly going mad through his use of drugs. Jelly Roll Morton is also a character in the book. As the book says" a portrait of genius and self -destruction, set at the very moment when Jazz was born."The story is filled with jazz talk, music to some but somewhat Greek to me , like 'blowing his horn so deep blue it was almost black, so hot it was like the pit of a burning coal'. But I learned that the music was like chatter and the French for chatter is jaser, So was Buddy was doing was jassing.
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