Dixieland

New Orleans, 1916Wealthy, well-connected congressman Charles Whitman is murdered in a high-class brothel in Storyville, the city's notorious red-light district.

Detective Eddie Riordan finds evidence implicating the flamboyant Creole pianist Jelly Roll Morton - the self-professed "inventor" of jazz - who was playing in the band at the brothel that night. But why would a lowly piano player want to kill a leading politician, and why are some very powerful people in the city's business and political elite so keen to see him convicted?Riordan probes deeper and uncovers a trail of conspiracy and murder that leads him out into the alligator-infested swamps of southern Louisiana and a hunt for the killer that puts his own life in jeopardy. Interwoven with the sounds and colour of Storyville, the prostitutes and pimps, the musicians and music that made the area so unique, Dixieland is a vibrant portrait of human frailty, greed and lust that will keep the reader enthralled from start to finish.