Chasing The Devil's Tail by David Fulmer

Funny how one finds books to read. I was sitting in a reading room with my mom where she lives and this book with a strange title font on the binding caught her eye so I pulled it out so she could look at it. After reading the liner notes, I decided to give it a go.

Storyville is a bit of a cloistered community in turn of the 20th century New Orleans. It's home to house after house of sporting girls and the guys who turn over their money for a few minutes of delight. Tom Anderson is the elected state representative to the area and works very hard to keep a lid on criminal activity lest the city and state try to shut down the main source of income for the residents. The working girls pay attention to Lulu White's wisdom, pose for photographs by E.J. Bellocq, and love the piano technique of a young musician who goes by Jelly Roll Morton. All real characters from Storyville's picturesque past. But Buddy Bolden is the King, the man on the coronet who on one hand is inventing jazz and on the other hand is losing his mind.

Working girls are dying. Each victim seems to be letting someone they know into their room only to suffer their fate with the only clue left by the murderer being a black rose. Word has it that Buddy Bolden knew most all the girls and the police are trying to make a case out fo thin air for the mad musician to get the murders off the front page.

One way Tom Anderson keeps things in order in Storyville is by his personal investigator, Valentin St. Cyr - a mulatto with black, white, Italian, and some creole in him that allows him access to places most couldn't or wouldn't care to enter. Buddy and "Tino" go way back to childhood and Valentin can't believe that Buddy, no matter how mad, could be part of the string of murders. Anderson has Valentin investigate each bordello, the bars where Buddy plays his horn, the police, a voodoo woman, the local insane asylum and still comes up empty.

Anderson thinks St. Cyr is covering up for Buddy and fires him leaving Valentin free to look wherever the clues take him. With the help of his girlfriend Justine, herself a sporting girl, they piece together a couple comments that seemed inconsequential at the time that now lead them to one particular madam and those who populate her house.

This book won a Shamus Award for best first mystery. Since that 2001 debut, Fulmer has about 8 books out. Some continue in the historical vein with St. Cyr as the continuing character plus a couple that are more contemporary. While I've been known to read some historical fiction (Goddard, Liss, McCammon, Blevins among others), I had a bit of a hard time getting into this story. While I can't say it dragged, it just never seemed to 'get it on' meaning it seemed take me far longer to finish a 6x9 paperback of 334 pages. I may give him another try, but whether it will be another St. Cry mystery or one of his others is up for grabs.

East Coast Don