The Axemans Jazz - Ray Celestin #inbetweeney

This has probably been my favourite inbetweeny so far. It was a present from my mum who liked the look of the cover. Based very loosely on real events it took place in New Orleans in the 1920s when jazz, racism and the mafia were rife.

I really enjoyed the three thronged approach used by Celestin. Who out of the three detectives was going to catch the killer?, could they all be right or were their clues/trails leading them down the garden path?

The 'catching' of the killer (sorry trying to not give too much away) was perhaps the weakest part of the book but I loved the ending and went away frantically googling Louis Armstrong to learn more.

I liked both Michael and Luca and wanted them to make up. I questioned early on how things would pan out for Luca – realistically how could he ever escape the mafia either in Italy or America?

Celestin really caught the flavour of New Orleans, the grizzly underworld of prostitution, opium and poverty coupled with the flair of its music and its general noise. I enjoyed the characters back stories even though they had no part in pushing the plot forward.

If you like crime stories but are sick of the old clichés (burnt out cop, divorced, teetering on alcoholism, traumatised from a previous case) this is a refreshing change that is well worth a read.

It's a stay on the shelfer for me

Comments

Lock down book club - books from a different country

So we continued with the Zoom version of book club this month and it was lovely to see so many of us tackle it. The theme was books set in a different country (if you can't travel, let a book take you). I read The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet, a detective story with an element of tricksy fiction set in France. I really enjoyed it and you can read my full review here. We travelled to America a couple of times most interestingly to see whether Hilary Clinton (or Bill for that fact) would have made President if they had not got married. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld is out in hardback now. Norway was a popular spot - Norwegian Nights by Derek B Miller about a retired american marine who moves to Norway and intervenes to save a young boys life sounded interesting. So much so that at least one member of the group has gone on to buy the first in the series, American By Day. We even made it as far as Japan and Botswana (and discovered a Scottish connection for Alexander McCa

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanthi

I expected to be emotionally drained after reading this one and to be honest (in a weird kind of way) I didn’t mind the thought that I would be. This was backed up by the introduction describing a brilliant young man whose writing was breath taking and whose story was devastating. Emotional rollercoaster of epic proportions was surely in store. I didn’t mind the beginning of the book although I was slightly surprised when we delved so deeply into Kalanthi's past in what was only a slim book. I was willing to gloss over the large number of references to his search as a youth to finding the meaning of life and what makes us, us as after all this was written by someone forced to ponder that very question. I also found the medical training he did vaguely interesting, I appreciated the reverence he placed in relation to the cadaver he was required to cut open as part of his medical training. However when it became apparent the actual portion of the book to do with him receiving hi

Village Christmas: And Other Notes on the English Year by Laurie Lee #BookOfTheMonth #OneRuleOfBookClub

When suggested last month we snapped up this 150 page or so collection of Lee's descriptions, memoirs and musings. Consisting of Chapters of no more than a few pages, topics included the river Severn, a pub and the landscaping of a garden! Winter, including Christmas, was the opening section so more than met the one rule of book club requirement (we review a Christmas book at Christmas). Spring, Summer and Autumn sections followed and one of the group chose to stop reading after the Winter section in order to read each section in its correct season. I love this idea but would either forget and end up reading them all in Autumn or would get frustrated that I still hadn't finished such a slim book that I had started in 2018. "Children trapped in new concrete estates will be denied the freedom we knew. They'll become prisoners of television, as most children are today, and as they grow up they'll start hanging about the streets in gangs and stealing cars."

Cramlington Book Club

Search This Blog