Really the Blues
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Paris, 1941. American jazz musician Eddie Piron has lived in the city of light since before the war began. But Paris under occupation is not what it once was, and things are looking a lot darker for a man like Eddie. The great jazz artists of the day, like Django Reinhardt, are lying low or being swept away under the racial policies of the Nazis. But the SS has a paradoxical taste for the "negermusik" and their favorite gathering place is La Caverne Negre, where Eddie leads the band.One night the drummer for "Eddie et Ses Anges", an indifferent musician but an essential part of the band, disappears. When his body is found in the Seine the next day, Eddie becomes entangled in the murder investigation. He soon finds himself in the clutches of a mercenary intelligence broker who discovers why Eddie Piron is really in Paris—and what he's really hiding.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
France in 1941 provides the colorful backdrop for this accomplished standalone from Edgar finalist Koenig (False Negative). Eddie Piron, who fled New Orleans under mysterious circumstances, has adjusted to life in Paris under the Nazis as the leader and trumpeter of a seven-man jazz band. But things take a sinister turn with the disappearance of his drummer, Borge Janssen, who later resurfaces as a corpse floating in the Seine. Adding to the complications, the drummer's girlfriend, Anne Cartier, supposedly commits suicide by sticking her head in a gas oven, an act that kills others after a curious neighbor accidentally triggers an explosion when she turns on a light. When Piron becomes a person of interest to the Gestapo, he has a personal incentive to discover the truth about Janssen's killing. Despite superficial resemblances to some plot elements of Casablanca, the book works on its own terms as a absorbing portrayal of life under the German occupation.
