Honky-Tonk Girl: A Crime Novel

Honky-Tonk Street--a dark, lonely, sordid edge of town--a place where Johnny Nickles and his jazz band are playing hot sets in seedy clubs and rundown bars. But a killer is stalking Johnny's band, and Johnny finds himself trapped in a deadly game of chicken with a local power broker, a corrupt sheriff, and a professional thug for hire. What's worse, the group's mysterious "Ghost Album," which memorializes and recreates classic jazz songs by long-dead masters, has become almost a curse on the band. This is a haunting, forgotten classic of the noir crime novel. Beckman knows his music and his setting, and struts them out as masterfully as any jazzman playing a hot solo to a packed house. It doesn't get much better than this! First publication in six decades.