Book description
Honky-Tonk Street-a dark, lonely, sordid edge of town where doom and
despair reign supreme-a place where Johnny Nickles and the members of
his jazz band are playing hot sets in seedy clubs among the whores,
winos, and grifters who make up the denizens of the district. But a
killer is stalking Johnny and his band, and Johnny finds himself trapped
in a deadly game of chicken with local power broker Sam Cowles, his
corrupt lackey Sheriff Botello, and a deadly professional thug for hire.
What's worse, the group's mysterious Ghost Album, which memorializes and
recreates classic jazz songs by long-dead masters of the art, has become
almost a curse to the performers. This is a haunting, forgotten classic
of the noir crime novel. We can feel the world closing in on Johnny
Nickles; we can almost hear the moody jazz riffs and cool music
background tightening around his neck. Beckman's text beats a worthy
accompaniment to the harsh tempo of Johnny's downward spiral. In this
novel jazz is not merely a background to the noir setting, it's a flesh
and blood thing rich with a texture that runs deep and true throughout
the story. Beckman knows his stuff, and struts it as masterfully as any
jazzman playing a hot solo to a packed house. It doesn't get much better
than this. First publication in almost six decades.
