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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very good and very fascinating, December 26, 2007
Apparently David Fulmer is a music aficionado. He wrote three wonderful mysteries in a series set in turn-of-the-last-century New Orleans. All three featured, at least in the background, the founding of Jazz. There's apparently a fourth book that I missed set in Atlanta in the `20s, which uses the inception of the Blues as its background. This latest book is set in Philadelphia in the early `60s, and takes as its setting the start of the Doo Wop era.
The main character is a retired boxer named Eddie Cero. Eddie stops two guys from beating on a third, older man, and then discovers that the guy he rescued is a private detective. Since Eddie's unemployed (his fighting career having come to an end) he agrees to help the older man in several of his investigations, and then, whimsically, begins one on his own. The investigation he conducts himself turns out to be the central part of the book. Three years earlier, the lead singer and founder of the singing group known as the Excels disappeared. There have been rumors ever since as to what happened to him and why, and now Eddie, seeing the guy's little sister sing in a bar, decides to find out what happened to him.
It's sort of strange to read a nostalgic treatment of the era you grew up in, when you don't think of yourself as truly old yet (I'm 48). Eddie's world of furnished apartments and cars with tail fins seems so foreign now. The Excels were black, and at one point the little sister says something to Eddie about how he's white. His response tells you a lot about how the world viewed ethnic groups back then, and how it views them now: "I'm not white, I'm Italian." The author does a wonderful job of evoking the world of the early rock-and-roll artists, and especially the world in which they lived. I enjoyed this book a great deal, and would recommend it.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"On top, like a joyous crown, was the music.", December 29, 2007
Changing venues and eras, Fulmer's latest novel is set in 1960s Philadelphia, welterweight boxer Eddie Cero taking one last beating at the hands of T-Bone Mieux, a dirty fighter who wins any way he can. Nursing his latest round of cuts and bruises, Cero stumbles home, stopping along the way to rescue Salvatore Giambroni from the flying fists of two thugs. Sal, as it turns out over drinks, is an ex-cop who now runs his own detective agency, SG Investigations. Before he knows what happened, Eddie finds himself a new hire at Sal's agency, sent out on a few surveillance gigs to get his feet wet. As Eddie gradually accepts the fact that he won't fight professionally again, working with Sal becomes an acceptable alternative, especially when an apartment is provided that offers some privacy and its own bathroom. Eddie's life is looking up.
It is a cold case that finally captures Cero's attention, the disappearance of a pop soul singer, Johnny Pope, Eddie's interest further piqued by Pope's blues singing sister, Valerie, who performs at a local club, The Blue Door. Unfortunately, Pope's disappearance isn't on Sal's radar, but eventually the older man agrees that Eddie can pursue the case on his own time. As the last of the current cases winds down- a young woman sneaking away from high school for afternoon trysts with a local ladies' man- Eddie becomes more deeply involved with an investigation that will bring him face to face with murder and dark secrets meant to be kept that way.
Drawn to the beautiful Valerie Pope, Cero focuses on the likely suspects, a record producer, an agent, ex-band members, anyone who had a stake in Pope's success. But Eddie narrows the list down when two more murders occur and he still hasn't gotten answers to his questions. Delving into a recording industry haunted by the Payola scandal and the corruption of organized crime, Cero recreates Pope's last troubled days. The racial attitudes of 1962 Philly exacerbate Eddie's predicament, his attraction to Valerie blinding him to any possible complicity, a blonde bombshell promising secrets and a rendezvous and unfinished business with T-Bone Mieux that almost takes Eddie down for the count.
Peopled with cops, crooks and regular citizens in need of a PI, the landscape of Eddie's world changes radically with Sal as his mentor, in a field where the ex-boxer may have a natural talent, where people's motives are often obscured by their actions and nobody really tells the truth. Valerie's sad songs in his head, Cero plunges into an ugly, dangerous underworld, where murder is incidental and greed is normal, surprising himself by his willingness to take another direction toward a life he can barely yet imagine. A new sleuth, in a troubled time and place with a rock n'roll backbeat, Eddie Cero has just begun. Luan Gaines/ 2007.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"South Philly: The World's Biggest Jukebox.", March 25, 2008
The rhythms and music of the city underlie this lively mystery novel set in South Philadelphia, where, in the late 1950s, music drew from its many cultures, spawned dozens of acts, and led to a vibrant music industry. Among the best of the soul groups was the Excels, led by Johnny Pope, in his early twenties when the group started making hit records. In February, 1959, minutes after finishing a recording session, Johnny Pope vanished, leaving his cousin Ray, his friend Tommy Gates, and his sister Valerie forever in limbo, mourning his absence, if not his death.
Among Johnny's fans was Eddie Cero, a local welterweight with a huge vinyl collection of doo-wop, rockabilly, and soul, a collection which has provided hours of listening pleasure between fights and training sessions. Now, three years after Johnny's disappearance, Eddie Cero's boxing career is at its end, and when Sal Giambroni, a former cop turned private detective, offers Eddie twenty dollars to help out on a surveillance, Eddie, with nothing to lose, agrees, temporarily. Soon, however, he begins to like the job--and the car and better apartment which come with it.
An investigation of the bartender at The Blue Door nightclub brings Eddie into the music scene he so loves--and a meeting with Valerie Pope, formerly of the Excels, performing solo. Before long, Eddie has Sal's permission to investigate Johnny Pope's three-year-old disappearance on his own time, a job which becomes significantly more difficult when Valerie and others do not want to rake up the past. Gradually, questions about Johnny surface: Who had a contract on Johnny's life? What were his relationships with his agent and producer? And whatever happened to the tape that he recorded the night of his disappearance? As Eddie and Sal continue their bread-and-butter surveillance jobs, Eddie spends his spare time investigating the Johnny Pope case.
Eddie Cero and Sal Giambroni are likable characters caught in the maelstrom of South Philly, doing the best they can, dealing with whatever life dishes out. Author David Fulmer's ability to handle dialogue in realistic street slang is matched by his unique imagery--of hoods "strutting in olive oil operettas." As the complexities of the sometimes sleazy music industry develop, and two new murders occur, Eddie, Sal, and the reader become involved in the atmosphere of violence which runs parallel with the music, sometimes infuses it, and occasionally overwhelms it. Fulmer's background as a jazz expert and writer combine with his talent for mystery, for which he has achieved a Shamus Award, to create an assured and textured novel as full of soul as the music which Valerie Pope sings. n Mary Whipple
The Dying Crapshooter's BluesRampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries)
Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries)
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