1907 Storyville. Cultures, races, and religions more often blend than clash in a rich gumbo only New Orleans could serve up. But trouble brews. In this red light district, prostitutes ply their trade whether in cramped cribs or elegant houses of French ancestry, while music surges through its streets and helps harmonize the light and dark elements. King Bolden rules the Storyville brass with his golden coronet and his gift--jasser--to blow a riff on the city's music that pulses with new rhythms and notes. But the real King of Storyville is Tom Anderson, the district's powerful property owner and political fixer, who employs Creole detective Valentin St. Cyr to dig into the deaths of a string of prostitutes. Each victim is found with a black rose. Is a serial killer leaving a calling card? Is King Bolden losing his mind as he stretches his genius to its limits? Why is an elderly priest sent away under care?
"This brilliant debut noir captures a time and place so perfectly the reader will resent each time he has to lay it aside...."
--Barbara Peters
David Fulmer is the author of seven critically-acclaimed novels with Poisoned Pen Press, Harcourt Books, and Five Stones Press.
"Chasing the Devil's Tail" was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Barry Award, and a Falcon Award, was on Borders' "Best of 2003 List," and won a Shamus Award and an AudioFile Golden Earphones Award. It has been translated into Japanese, Italian, and French. "Jass" was nominated for the "Best of 2005" lists by Library Journal, Deadly Pleasures Magazine, and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and won the 2005 Georgia Author of the Year Award for Fiction. Rampart Street was included as one of New York Magazine's "Best Novels You've Never Read" and the audiobook version won the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Award for Audiobook Fiction. His fourth novel, "The Dying Crapshooter's Blues received the "Ice Pick of the Month Award" by Bookpage. "The Blue Door" was chosen for the "2008 Best of the Shelf" by Atlanta Magazine and was nominated for the 2009 Shamus Award for Best Novel.
His sixth novel, Lost River, was released in January 2009 and his seventh, "The Fall," will be released in 2010 by Five Stones Press.
His books have received superlative reviews from The Times Picayune, USA Today, The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, BookList, Kirkus Reviews, The Detroit Free Press, The Sacramento Bee, The Boston Globe, The Tennessean, Bookpage, The Plain Dealer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Christian Science Monitor, and numerous other publications and book-related websites.
Fulmer wrote and produced the documentary "Blind Willie's Blues," which Video Librarian called "nothing less than the economic, social, and historical evolution of America's indigenous music." It earned him a nomination for a W.C. Handy "Keeping the Blues Alive" Award in 1998. He also writes and produces the "Americana" audio series for NPR affiliate WABE-FM and WMLB-AM, both in Atlanta. He is the co-producer of "Piano Red - The Lost Atlanta Tapes" which was released in August 2010 by Landslide Records.
As a journalist, he has written about music and other subjects for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including The Atlanta Journal & Constitution, Southline, Atlanta Magazine, Paste Magazine, City Life, Markee, Blues Access, Il Giornale, Goodlife, Advertising Age, The Atlanta Tribune, Creative Loafing, BackStage, Georgia Music Magazine, and various trade publications.
A native of central Pennsylvania, he lives in Atlanta with his daughter Italia.
www.davidfulmer.com
