Reviewed By Liz

ISBN 1590584856
Poisoned Pen Press - Hardcover

SHADES OF BLUE - A Evan Horne mystery - After several months of successful work in London and Amsterdam with American expatriate Fletcher Paige, Evan Horne returns to the states and settles in the San Francisco Bay Area. There he reunites with his girlfriend, FBI agent, Andie Lawrence. And Evan quickly makes inroads into the Bay Area jazz scene. Life is good until a phone call from a Los Angeles attorney turns his life upside down. Evan’s old friend and former mentor, pianist Calvin Hughes, has died, and named Evan as his sole beneficiary. Evan is shocked to learn that Hughes has left him his small Hollywood house, money, and all his possessions. But when Evan begins to play through some hand-written sheet music, he recognizes one as a song from the landmark Miles Davis recording Birth of the Cool, and another from Kind of Blue, arguably one of the most important recordings in modern jazz. Was Calvin Hughes the uncredited composer of one or both of these tunes, or was it simply Hughes’s transcriptions from the recordings? In addition, Evans finds a cryptic note, and a photo taken almost 40 years earlier—a young Cal with his hand on a baby carriage. Both are taped to the bottom of a dresser drawer. A friend of Cal’s Lisa Gaines will continue to take care of Milton and rent from Evan. Evan is soon on a whirl-wind journey across the country to find answers from his family and to confront his mother. What was her relationship with Calvin Hughes? And just how did Jazz come into the equation?

Bill Moody was born in Webb City, Missouri and grew up in Santa Monica, California. A professional jazz drummer, Bill has played and/or recorded with Jr. Mance, Maynard Ferguson, Jon Hendricks, Annie Ross, and Lou Rawls. He lived in Las Vegas for many years as a musician on the Las Vegas Strip, hosted a weekly radio show at KUNV-FM, and taught in the UNLV English Department. He now lives in northern California, where he teaches creative writing at Sonoma State University, and continues to be active in the Bay Area jazz scene with the Terry Henry Trio and Dick Conte’s trio and quartet. He is the author of five previous Evan Horne novels: Looking for Chet Baker, Bird Lives!, Sound of the Trumpet, Death of a Tenor Man, and Solo Hand.

Check out Bill’s web site at www.billmoodyjazz.com.

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