Book description
Brun Campbell, a 15-year-old piano-playing fool, hears Scott Joplin's
“Maple Leaf Rag” played one 1898 afternoon in Oklahoma City. It's
destiny calling. Asking for ragtime lessons, he's told, “No, Ragtime is
colored music.” So Brun runs away from the family farm to Sedalia,
Missouri, to persuade Joplin to take him on as a pupil. What Brun
doesn't expect is to trip over the body of a young woman. He
thoughtlessly picks up a couple of items before he rushes away from the
murder scene. When Edward Fitzgerald, a man who befriended Brun his
first night in town, is arrested for the woman's murder, Brun is certain
he's innocent. But if the boy shows anyone the things he pocketed at the
scene-things he now knows belonged to Scott Joplin-he'll point the
finger at the composer...and himself. Brun decides to get Fitzgerald,
Joplin, and himself off the hook by finding the real killer, but for
that he eventually needs some help from Dr. Overstreet, the alcoholic
town mayor; and John Stark, a man pushing sixty, who's been employing
Brun at his music store. Sedalia is rife with suspects, some of them
opportunists bent on stealing Joplin's music. And then there are the
girls and women-mysteries to Brun-like a teenager seized with religious
fever, a couple of mischievous prostitutes, and an attractive, ambitious
young woman with a hint of scarlet in her past, who further complicate
his pursuit of the killer. Real people, famous and not, comprise most
of the cast of this mystery, set in Sedalia, Missouri, known in the late
1800s as a center for ragtime. Teenage pianist Brun loves ragtime, but a
white kid isn't supposed to play “colored music.” Stubborn as well as
talented, he runs off to Sedalia to find Scott Joplin. On his first
night in town, he comes across the body of dead woman. Broke, he makes
off with a money clip he spots near her body, only later realizing that
his discovery links the gifted, driven Joplin to the killing. Racism is
a huge part of the story, and Karp weaves the theme thoroughly and
convincingly into his depiction of the music business and of Sedalia
society at the time. His large cast could have been trimmed, and his
characters frequently run to type, but that's not enough to sink this
well-intentioned novel, which clearly shows the best and worst of human
nature in days gone by. An author's note describes Karp's fictional
embellishments. Larry Karp grew up in Paterson, NJ and New York City.
He practiced perinatal medicine and wrote general nonfiction books and
articles for 25 years, then, in 1994, left medical work to write mystery
novels full-time. The backgrounds and settings of Larry's mysteries
reflect many of his interests, including musical antiques,
medical-ethical issues, and ragtime music. His current book, The Ragtime
Fool, the third work in a ragtime mystery trilogy, centers on the work
of ragtime revivalists during a 1951 ceremony in Sedalia, MO, and the
opposition the ragtimers faced from bigots in that racially-divided time
and place, Larry lives with his wife Myra in Seattle; they have two
grown children.
