LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Presenting an exhilarating murder mystery that plays out in a Mississippi city in the heady 1920s, Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz is mind-bendingly inventive. With American history reimagined as having not involved the annihilation of indigenous peoples, and the sprawling, multi-cultural city of Cahokia being an ancient indigenous city, this takes the noir-ish context to new thought-provoking levels. It’s also dizzyingly compelling, characterful and chockful of curveballs you’re unlikely to see coming.
The opening scene sees Detective Barrow and his partner discover a corpse on the roof of a pyramid-shaped skyscraper, amidst “a clot of shadows,” with “the wind full of wet flakes.” It seems the victim has been ritually murdered, and the death will incite mayhem in the city, with culture wars and personal passions playing out against a backdrop of skyscrapers, fog and smoke to a wailing jazz soundtrack.
Cahokia Jazz is nothing but richly-written, twisty and dazzlingly fresh.
Joanne Owen
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Cahokia Jazz Synopsis
A thrilling tale of murder and mystery in a city where history has run a little differently -- from the bestselling author of Golden Hill.
In a city that never was, in an America that never was, on a snowy night at the end of winter, two detectives find a body on the roof of a skyscraper.
It's 1922, and Americans are drinking in speakeasies, dancing to jazz, stepping quickly to the tempo of modern times. Beside the Mississippi, the ancient city of Cahokia lives on - a teeming industrial metropolis, containing every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. But that body on the roof is about to spark off a week that will spill the city's secrets, and bring it, against a soundtrack of wailing clarinets and gunfire, either to destruction or rebirth.
The multiple-award-winning Francis Spufford returns, with a lovingly created, richly pleasure-giving, epically scaled tale set in the golden age of wicked entertainments.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780571336876 |
| Publication date: |
5th October 2023 |
| Author: |
Francis Spufford |
| Publisher: |
Faber & Faber |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pagination: |
496 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Historical Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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Author
About Francis Spufford
Francis Spufford's first book, I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination, was awarded the Writers Guild Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of 1996 and a Somerset Maugham Award. His second book, The Child that Books Built was described as ' witty, compelling and elegant' by the New Statesman. His third book, Backroom Boys, was called a ' beautifully written book' by the Daily Telegraph and was shortlisted for the Aventis Prize and longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. He lives in Cambridge.
Author photo © Burt Koetsier
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