Not your typical detective mystery. It's much better writing than usual in this genre. The setting is colorful, turn of the century New Orleans and the birth of jazz. The characters are many and diverse, spanning the full range of the color spectrum that New Orleans was famous for.
The murder mystery almost seems secondary. The detective is strangely passive through most of the novel. There are no clues that I could find that point to the actual murderer, just suspicions. But the better than usual writing makes up for it somehow, although it might disappoint a fan of the genre.
Which makes me wonder why he didn't write a literary novel around these characters instead of shoehorning it into a mystery. But, he's published and I'm not! Actually, I have been to a talk by Fulmer and hope to someday take a class from him - he teaches a seminar at the Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta.
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