Ray Celestin is a British crime mystery writer that hails from London. He is best known for the Axeman and Dead Man’s Blues novels. Celestin’s debut novel was The Axeman’s Jazz that was published in 2014 and went on to attain massive popularity. Celestin is a thirty-year-old Londoner that studied languages and Asian art at university and a well-known scriptwriter for TV and film. Before writing his debut novel, he published a series of short stories that were moderately successful. As for his inspiration for his literary works, he is a voracious reader of historical crime fiction. He cites the likes of CJ Sansom and James Elroy which are either historical or written so long ago that their work becomes set in a past world. In fact, An Instance …show more content…
Set in Chicago, the novel tells of three disturbing events that happen on one stifling hot summer day. A famous heiress disappears mysteriously, a white gangster’s body is found dead and mutilated in a back alley, and a clique of city leaders die from food poisoning at a fancy hotel. Pinkerton Detective Agency’s finest Ida Davis and Michael Talbot are put on the case to locate the missing heiress by a distraught mother. Even as the girl is a well-known face in the city, locating her is not that easy, necessitating Ida to enlist the help of her longtime friend Louis Armstrong. Even as the police show little inclination to investigate the white gangster’s murder, crime photographer Jacob Russo is obsessed with the image of he dead man and begins his own investigations. Meanwhile, rum fixer and runner Dante Sanfelippo who works for Al Capone is in town to investigate a suspected traitor in their ranks on the orders of the boss. But Dante has his own history with the city which resurface after he comes back to the city that he had sworn never to come back to. With the three parties edging closer to the truth, their lives become more dangerous amidst the corruption, booze, and jazz of New