Customer Reviews

Blue Moon

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

He is the bandmaster of the Philip Damon Orchestra, lives in a beautiful apartment in New York City, and is on a first name basis with Jackie Kennedy and Truman Capote among other notables. On the surface, Phillip Damon has it all, but deep in his heart he is still grieving for Diana and their unborn child who were murdered in their apartment while Philip and his orchestra were on the road. The murderer was never caught.

Philip and his company are performing at a charity gig in the Fairmont Hotel when he momentarily spots a woman who looks almost exactly like his dead wife. During the actual performance, he sees the woman Lenore Ashley on the arms of famous real state tycoon Terrence Collier III. During the performance, the lights go out momentarily. When they come back on Collier is dead, an ice pick in his chest. Diana was involved with Collier before she met Philip and he is determined to find out if the murders are linked and if so, how.

Peter Duchin and John Morgan Wilson team up to write one of the better debut amateur sleuth novels of the year. The work itself is very atmospheric and the story line, which takes place in 1963, seems like it occurs in a world so much different than four decades ago. The plot is extremely well crafted, with so many coincidences and linking relationship that readers will keep turning the pages to find out all the secrets and agendas of the myriad of suspects.

Harriet Klausner

For those who enjoy a literary style as smooth and sweet as the legendary swing bands of the forties, here's an engrossing new mystery series to discover. Edgar winning author, John Morgan Wilson, teams up with society bandleader, Peter Duchin, to create an evocative series set in the world of the high society movers and shakers of 1963. Like Mr. Duchin himself, the protagonist is part of the social set that includes celebs of the time from DiMaggio and the Kennedys--a unique and clever milleau for dramas high and low as murder follows murder, and our protag is pursued as well.

I enjoyed the bright and complex characterizations and the intricate, noirish mystery plot as much as the authors' stylish, clear phrasings--in all, a piece of tantalizing music set into novel form.

This mystery is a winner. You will be glad to discover this series early.

Great book. Well-written, humorous, well-plotted. I look forward to more books in what could be a well-done series. I'm a big fan of John Morgan Wilson's Justice series and while this is not as dark as those can be, it is well worth the read.

Blue Moon is one of those rare pieces I read in one sitting. The authors craft a story with good pace (the celluloid runs through your mind during the car chase to the Golden Gate Bridge) Having been interested in the Duchin story for years, the authors play with Peter Duchin's personal history and use it to wonderful effect. Just as Philip Damon prefers of his music, the book "swings".

Society bandleader Peter Duchin and Edgar Award winning author John Morgan Wilson team up and give us a smoothly written little mystery in "Blue Moon."

Set in the San Francisco of 1963, they blend history with fiction in an action packed noirish plot.

Celebrities and pop icons of the day from Joe DiMaggio to Andy Warhol---Jackie Kennedy to Jack Kerouac---Truman Capote to Willie Mays pop up along with a major part for Herb Caen.

It has the feel of Archy McNally meeting up with The Thin Man---snappy dialogue, complex plot, lotsa characters with agendas, many cocktails, dead bodies and an alto sax playing San Francisco Inspector who sits in with the protagonist's (Philip Damon) band.

It is an excellent amateur sleuth whodunit peopled with intriguing characters. The atmosphere of sixties San Francisco is truly captured.

There are many laughs along the way. "Blue Moon" is big fun.

My mom read Blue Moon and loved it. She passed it on to me and I was pretty luke warm about it at first. When I finally opened the book and began reading I was captivated immediately. This is a real page turner. It is a whodunit that kept me guessing right to the end. I really enjoyed the real life characters of 1963 that come in and out of the story. The descriptions of San Francisco were vivid and perfect! I enjoyed some of the history of the city sprinkled in too. I have purchased the second book featuring the main characters for me and my mom. Don't tell her I bought her Christmas gifts -- a signed, first edition book of Peter Duchin's memoir -- Ghost of a Chance and a DVD of the Eddie Duchin Story with Tyrone Power and Kim Novak! She is going to freak!

I got this impeccably new signed first edition of Peter Duchin's and John Morgan Wilson's Blue Moon at an incredibly reasonable price. It arrived quickly and in perfect condition. What a thrill for a reader and lover of great American music.

Peter Duchin, of course, is the son of the celebrated bandleader Eddie Duchin, a noted musician in his own right, and the author of the well-received memoir GHOST OF A CHANCE. John Morgan Wilson is a journalist, screenwriter, and Edgar-winning author of the Benjamin Justice mystery-novel series. Together they have created Philip Damon, a bandleader who bears a notable resemblance to co-author Duchin and who finds himself at the center of mystery, murder, and mayhem in 1963 San Francisco: several years earlier Damon's beloved wife Diana was strangled to death in their New York apartment; now Damon has returned to the city where they first met, and as he and his band begin to play Diana's double walks into the room on the arm of one the city's rich and powerful, and murder is not far behind.

It sounds interesting, but it isn't. The plot reads rather like an extremely improbable mixture of Charlie Chan, The Thin Man, and Vertigo with a splash of circa-1963 political correctness thrown in for good measure--and it is rendered with such an excessive degree of period charm that it's a wonder the writers didn't expire from nostalgia overdose. They are also tiresomely celebrity conscious, working hard to introduce such famous names as Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, and Truman Capote on virtually every page and to a remarkably tiresome degree. Before the novel ends, we've had stolen pearls, mysterious trips to the Chinatown, drag queens, and enough references to various musicians of the era to sink a boat, much less a novel. Now, all of this might be forgiven--including what I thought was a rather obvious double-edged solution--were it not for the fact that the style is very stiff and the characters are extremely inconsistent, shifting from naughty to nice without seeming provocation.

One of the characters in the novel, Charlene, is fond of reading murder mysteries. Toward the end of the novel she notes that she is presently reading a new Dorothy Sayers mystery novel. Unfortunately, in 1963 Sayers hadn't published a mystery novel in more than twenty years; indeed, Sayers herself had been dead for six. This is hardly the first time the authors fiddle dates in the book, but hey, why let plausibility get in the way? And indeed, this is indicative of the novel as a whole. Final take: it is readable, but it isn't something you'll read again, it won't make you a fan of the Duchin-Wilson writing team, and there are many much better mystery novels out there--several of Dorothy Sayers' among them.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

This was a good book-- I especially liked the references to famous people who appeared through out the story. The story moved right along, and the ending was satisfactory. Usually I don't read who-done-its-, but this one was very interesting.

Band leader Philip Damon has struggled to get on with his life after his wife's murder. Now, two years later, his friends urge him to take a gig in San Francisco--where he first met Diana. He finally agrees, hoping to put the memories behind him. Instead, in 1963 San Francisco, suspended between the beat of the 1950s and age of rock and roll, Damon finds his memories brutally reawakened--by more murder. With the help of San Francisco's only black inspector, who doesn't believe in coincidence, Damon finds hints that his wife was more than he'd ever believed, and that these new murders are connected to her own.

Authors Peter Duchin and John Morgan Wilson deliver just about every celebrity of 1963, from Jackie Kennedy and Truman Capote, to the Jefferson Airplane, to Joe DiMaggio to Jack Kerouac along with a host of local names that will make San Francisco natives take note. In many ways, the 1960s were the birth of our age and Duchin and Wilson do a fine job describing this--down to Damon's belief that rock and roll will soon fade (and there are those who say that it has so go figure).

For me, this emphasis on celebrities occasionally obscured the mystery. More important, it obscured the character of Damon himself. BLUE MOON would have had dramatically more impact had I truly sympathized with Damon, really cared about his recovery, the loss of is wife, or his safety as he caromed through the streets of San Francisco. Perhaps the celebrity focus took Duchin and Wilson's eyes off that ball because I never gained that emotional connection.

BLUE MOON is well written and delivers plenty of action to go with its historical details and slanted look at a world in the midst of change as seen by a man who is blind to the changes.