Ray Celestin: Sunset Swing, Pan Macmillian UK, 9781509839001, large format Paperback

 

Since stumbling across Ray Celestin’s debut “The Axeman’s Jazz” set in 1919 New Orleans, I have been patiently waiting for each installment of the “City Blues Quartet”.   

“Sunset Swing”, the latest in the series, is set in 1967 Los Angeles; it held me firmly captive for 560 pages.  Rarely have I read such incredibly atmospheric period crime novels set in the world of mobsters and Jazz, all centering around Ida Young, a colored female detective, one of the very first and a childhood friend of Louis Armstrong.   

Not one book in the series is weak, recommend them all wholeheartedly. I am always blown away at how Celestin strings along such complex, multilayered plots told from the perspective of mostly 3-4 characters that reappear in the follow ups, ending mostly in an emotionally very charged finale. I love them all, absolutely fascinated by the mobster stories based on real life characters, the excellent writing and the details that went into the research of these period setting. “Dead Man Blues” takes the reader to Al Capone's Chicago in 1928 and “The Mobster’s Lament” to New York in 1947. It is hardly surprising that Axeman’s Jazz won New Blood Dagger Award and every other title has been short listed for prestigious awards.

In “Sunset Swing” Ida Young has retired, she is 67 and has no longer any taste for the world of crime and mobsters.  When a young woman is found murdered in her hotel room with Ida’s name written on a paper slip she is brought into the investigation by the LAPD.  Meanwhile her old friend, the former mobster fixer Dante Sanfelippo , is brought in by the mob to find the missing son of an Italian mobster boss, a last favor before Dante's retirement to a vinyard  in Napa Valley.  Kerry Gaudet, a Nalpam disfigured Vietnam veteran nurse is flying in to search for her missing brother fearing that something terrible has happened to him.  A spider web of connections ties these three people together in a hunt for a brutal serial killer who takes Ida back to a nightmare  case in New Orleans. Celestin surpasses himself with a great plot, anything more would spoil the reading fun of this gripping but sadly final novel in the series. Five stars from me.