Cahokia Jazz
It is 1922, and in a mythical city in the Midwestern United States an Aztec-style murder has been discovered on a rooftop. This sets off a chain of chaos and disruption, underlying tensions are exacerbated, and the police come under pressure to find the ‘right’ sort of suspects. At the centre of the narrative is Joe Barrow, a Native American police officer and would-be jazz musician. He struggles with his choice of career, his relationship with his work partner Phineas Drummond, and his fascination by the enigmatic Moon (a member of the city’s traditional royal family).
This is a world in which Native Americans survived European settlement in large numbers and in which a pocket of Aztec civilisation remains in the U.S. But in many other ways this is recognisably 1920s America. There are Prohibition and speakeasies, racial tension and the Ku Klux Klan, jazz and ornate architecture. But, with one group of citizens following a hereditary ruler, the power structure is different.
Between the twists and turns of the narrative, there are different levels to the story. On the one hand, it is a complex murder mystery and its resolution. On the other it is the creation of a mythical society and its rituals, and the clash between different groups with different cultures and values, holding up a mirror to the real history of the 1920s. Then there is Barrow’s own journey of self-discovery, which in some ways I found the most interesting. A thought-provoking novel.
