Book Review - Dead Man's Blues by Ray Celestin

This massive, mammoth, mesmerizing mystery takes place in Chicago in 1928 with its plethora of mobsters, murderers, millionaires, musicians and marginalized minorities. 

Race permeates everything, particularly with Chicago’s recent intoxication with jazz — and every alcoholic beverage during Prohibition. Al Capone runs a tight ship, and Louis Armstrong’s arrival from New Orleans in 1922 starts the town dancing.

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Celestin magnificently anatomizes Chicago from the Gold Coast to Bronzeville, complete with beer and brothels, corruption and the stink of the stockyards, steel mills and speakeasys. 

Race, regions and riches clash, collide and confront one another. Sex runs rampant. Jazz juices up the blood. Poisoned alcohol kills. Everything can be bought from the governor on down.

Three mysteries immediately surface. Why has Capone summoned Dante Sanfelippo, a bootlegger from New York, to Chicago? Can Pinkerton detectives Ida Davis and Michael Talbot help old-moneyed Mrs. Van Haren find her daughter Gwendolyn, who’s vanished along with her beau, Charles Coulton? 

And who’s the dead man in the alley that crime photographer Jason Russo, discovers? How will this triad merge? Who’s addicted to what? And why do more bodies end up in the sewer canal and by the old Pullman Ice Works?

Is there a traitor in Capone’s outfit? Who’s been sabotaging his liquor runs? Who’s been gouging corpses’ eyes? How is Randall Taylor involved, the black guy who treats rich whites to “slumming” in Bronzeville?

The novel’s divided into sections — cadenza, duet, solo, improvisation — that mimics Armstrong’s hit recording “West End Blues.” 

Celestin’s prose often waxes lyrical and poetic and makes this a terrific book to immerse yourself in. Chicago plays a major role, engulfing, killing, and entangling all comers. Social Darwinism rules with a bloody vengeance, and the stakes are literally available to the highest bidder.

This city of “chrome and speed” delights, appalls, terrifies and seduces. And so does Celestin’s ultimately majestic novel.

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Original review on: http://www.providencejournal.com