New Orleans 1919. As music fills the city, a serial killer strikes . . . Inspired by a true story, Ray Celestin's The Axeman's Jazz is a sinister debut crime thriller.
Ray Celestin lives in London. He studied Asian art and languages at university and is a script writer for film and TV, as well as publishing several short stories. The Axeman's Jazz is his first novel.
Debut novelist Ray Celestin has based his beguiling crime thriller
on the true story of a serial killer who terrorised New Orleans for
more than a year after the First World War. Beautifully written,
the evocative prose brings the jazz-filled, mob-ruled 'Big Easy' of
pre-prohibition America to life in glorious effect with a story
full of suspense and intrigue. Stunning.
*Sunday Express*
A rewarding crime novel, swinging its way to a terrifying
denouement with all the panache of a New Orleans marching band.
This is an excellent debut, with a promise of more good mysteries
to come.
*The Times*
Celestin smartly evokes the atmosphere of 1919 New Orleans, and a
city dominated by music and the mob. Gripping.
*Sunday Times*
Inspired by the serial killer thought to have been responsible for
12 murders in New Orleans between 1918 and 1919, Ray Celestin's
first novel, The Axeman's Jazz initially stays close to the known
facts and includes a letter, published in the newspapers at the
time, which was supposedly sent by the original Axeman. The writer,
who, like the author of the famous 1888 "Jack the Ripper" letter,
gives his address as "Hell", promises to claim his next victim at a
specific date and time but says that he will spare those "in whose
home a jazz band is in full swing". As with the Ripper, the real
killer's identity remains unknown, and Celestin has three
characters struggling to work out who he or she might be. Detective
lieutenant Michael Talbot heads the official investigation; his
former partner, Luca d'Andrea, recently freed from prison for
corruption, is tasked by the mafia to discover whodunnit; and
19-year-old Sherlock Holmes fan Ida Davis, a secretary for the
Pinkerton Detective Agency, decides to branch out on her own . . .
Both a fascinating portrait of a vibrant and volatile city and a
riveting read.
*Guardian*
Debut novelist Ray Celestin harnesses his trained scriptwriting eye
for drama with the fascinating real-life story of the terrifying,
Tarot card-touting Axeman in this atmospheric, high-tension
thriller set in the broiling heat of the Deep South city that
became the birthplace of jazz. Blending music, history and crime,
Celestin builds a wickedly seductive and gripping tale as three
people - one aided and abetted by a young, cornet-playing Louis
Armstrong - set out to unmask the serial killer. The Axeman's Jazz
was always going to be an ambitious project... delving deep into a
true crime, blending a network of real and fictional characters and
painting a portrait of an energetic, cosmopolitan city blighted by
corruption and racism is a daunting challenge. But Celestin, the
new kid on the block, has proved himself more than equal to the
task. Using exceptional scene setting, zippy dialogue, a notably
gutsy female lead and a mesmerising sense of time and place, he
gets to the cruel heart of a savage crime and the musical soul of a
sultry city . . . This is a thriller which doesn't just ask
whodunit but why do the hunters need to know whodunit, and with the
door left ajar for a sequel, we can look forward to more from this
intriguing, intrepid author.
*Lancashire Evening Post*
This debut thriller pulses with the beat of New Orleans in 1919
when a real-life killer stalked the Big Easy, and was never caught.
Now Celestin creates a thriller that's evocative of a city where
voodoo and trad jazz go hand in hand in the back alleys off Basin
Street.
*Peterborough Telegraph*
A brilliantly evoked roller coaster ride through pre-prohibition
New Orleans - a town packed tight with jazz men and voodoo women,
corrupt politicians and even more corrupt cops. This is historical
fiction as time travel writing and a very difficult book to put
down once started.
*William Ryan, acclaimed author of the Captain Korolev series*
Utterly compelling, soaked in the unique intoxicating atmosphere of
the New Orleans of the period. Marvellous, engaging characters and
the writing is pretty much pitch perfect
*R. N. Morris*
Smart, thrilling and dripping with class. A very special debut.
*Malcolm Mackay, author of The Glasgow Trilogy*
During a stormy summer in 1919 New Orleans, a serial killer is
hacking seemingly random victims to death. This thriller, which
blends voodoo, gangsters and jazz into an intoxicating mix, is
based on a true story.
*Sunday Mirror*
Louis Armstrong is among those trying to track down a serial killer
in the New Orleans of 1919 in Celestin's outstanding debut
novel.
*Daily Telegraph*
Ray Celestin's exciting debut novel has covered all the bases - a
clever and utterly believable procedural with a suitably grisly
killer, set in a brilliant and vibrant historical background in one
of the world's most multi-racial and fascinating societies.
Inspired by a true story, he pulls no punches. His New Orleans, a
year after the end of the First World War, is a truly nasty place,
riddled with massive and endemic corruption, racism and organised
crime all echoing the throbbing chords of the 'new' black music of
blues and jazz . . . Celestin's characters are totally realistic,
from the back street whores of Storyville to the opium-addicted
reporter who knows far more than he should. But it is his
ungarnished and, often deeply unflattering, descriptions of the
people and the town itself which make this book such a memorable
and genuinely compelling read. He maintains a mixture of hectic
pace, horrifying brutality, social comment, first class historical
detail and moments of surprising and genuine humanity right through
to a totally genuine denouement set in a typical Louisiana gulf
storm. And the mention of a certain Alphonse Capone in the epilogue
promises more to come.
*Crime Review*
The Axeman's Jazz by Ray Celestin is the best debut I've read this
year, and another slice of America in the first half of the 20th
century: 1919 in New Orleans, the birth of the jazz era and the
mafia holding their grip. A serial killer tale that captures its
time and place with real style.
*Scotsman Crime Books of the Year*
Superb.
*Guardian Crime Books of the Year*
The serial axe-killer who terrified New Orleans in 1919 sent a
letter to a newspaper explaining that "I am very fond of jazz
music" and promising that any house in which jazz was being played
would escape his murderous attention. That much is absolutely true.
Celestin has skilfully woven around the facts a clever story of
three detectives who, in different ways and for different motives,
set out to find the murderer. He brilliantly portrays the mood of a
city under a siege of fear. Fictional musicians mix with the real
jazz artists of the period, not least Louis Armstrong.
*The Times Crime Books of the Year*
With such unlikely figures as Oscar Wilde being dragooned as
sleuths in crime fiction, perhaps jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong is
not such a stretch - Ray Celestin's debut novel places him as one
of a group on the trail of a serial axe murderer in early
20th-century New Orleans. The Axeman's Jazz quickly gleaned awards,
sporting an acute sense of period shored up by an evocation of the
sound of early jazz - no easy thing on the printed page. There's a
challenge for this writer: how does he follow this up?
*Independent Crime Books of the Year*
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