If your reading
preferences lean towards crime with a touch of jazz - or vice versa - then the
noir novels of Charlotte Carter are for you.
I waxed eloquently about Ms Carter's first novel - Rhode Island Red - in which her series' protagonist: Nanette Hayes, a black, female street musician blows tenor sax on the sidewalks of Manhattan.
The author's words are as compelling as a ballad by Ben or a bop riff by Bird. Despite the bodies that surround her she survives and reappears in Coq Au Vin busking in Paris and Drumsticks where she is back on the streets of Manhattan.
I'm re-reading them again and they get better and better with every page. Apart from the jazz and the crime they bring New York (and Paris) to life better than Fodor or Baedeker ever did.
If noir novelists Cornell Woolrich or Dashiell Hammett and jazz writer Stanley Crouch had ever got together to write novels then they may have produced something close to this trilogy - close, but no cigar. Lance
1 comment :
Any Kindle readers Amazon have the books on offer Coq Au Vin is a mere 99p and the other two are £3.99 each so from Lance's review all three for under a tenner seems a real bargain.
Post a Comment