★ 10/23/2023
Spufford (Light Perpetual) sets his clever latest in an alternate America where the Indigenous population wasn’t decimated by the European-borne smallpox epidemic in the 16th century. The resulting change is best exemplified by the city of Cahokia in 1922, where Indigenous people rule hereditarily and are integrated with white and Black populations. Det. Joe Barrow and his corrupt white partner, Phineas Drummond, are called to the rooftop of the Land Trust building, where a dead body has been discovered, eviscerated and missing its heart. Early indications point to an Aztec ritual sacrifice. But the two detectives soon find a link to the local KKK, whose goal is to rid the city of Indigenous rule. Barrow quickly realizes he is in over his head trying to expose a conspiracy that involves a German American bootlegger, a munitions tycoon, an Indigenous femme fatale, and maybe even the Cahokia PD. This richly imagined and densely plotted story refreshes the crime genre and acts as a fun house mirror reflection of contemporary attitudes toward race—all set to a thumping jazz age soundtrack. Standing alongside Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker series and Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, this is a challenging evocation of an America that never was. (Feb.)
Dazzling . . . an intricate, suspenseful and moving story that rises from the mists of America’s prehistory and morphs into an alternate version of America’s story. . . . [Spufford] keeps his engine running with action and intrigue, romance and suspense, and his sense of place is spellbinding . . . Cahokia Jazz is an audacious work of the imagination by an author powerfully steeped in mythmaking.” —The Los Angeles Times
“Atmospheric . . . Spufford, one of our most powerful writers of wayward historical fiction, sets his book—a hard-boiled crime story—in an America that’s recognizable yet disquietingly not. . . . In the compelling character of Barrow—a mostly decent man trying to make sense of a fallen ‘what if’ world—many of us will recognize our own held-breath bafflement, caught, as we are, on the darkling plain of our own barely believable times.” —Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post
“A smoky, brooding noir set in the 1920s, but not an entirely recognizable 1920s . . . Cahokia Jazz combines the intricate plot and burly action of an old-fashioned hardboiled detective novel with Spufford’s dreamy, lustrous prose, summoning an irresistible city lost to time and chance.” —Laura Milller, Slate
"Cahokia Jazz is a love letter—not just to an America that might have been, but to a national mythology that’s very much alive in the world as it is.” —Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
"In this stylishly drawn mystery novel, the tropes of noir—among them a hardboiled detective with an artist’s soul, a powerful woman with a terrible secret, and a journalist chasing the story of a lifetime—appear in an alternative Jazz Age." —New Yorker
“Magical . . . a gripping rollercoaster, which fulfills all the demand of the noir form to which it pays homage and, like all the best alt-history, throws a fascinating light onto ‘real’ history." —Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
“Energetic and hugely enjoyable.” —The Guardian, Best Fiction of 2023
“A marvellous deep-layered tale of treachery and trickery.” —Independent
“Arresting . . . a gorgeously rich and multilayered story, packed with gunfire, music and superstition. . . . Cahokia Jazz is enormous fun, and the closest contemporary novel like it is Colson Whitehead’s magnificent The Underground Railroad. . . . Barrow is a terrific action hero.” —The Spectator
“Told in prose as intoxicating as a swig of bathtub gin, this 1920s gumshoe novel takes place in the fictional city of Cahokia where indigenous people are major players in the tenuous peace that rules the city. That is, until a body appears butchered atop a skyscraper, arranged in a way that appears to be a symbolic message. When an outcast detective and his partner are put on the case, wheels start turning in gasp-inducing twists through the very last page.”—Good Housekeeping, Most Anticipated Books of 2024
“A richly entertaining take on the crime story, and a country that might’ve been.”—Kirkus (starred review)
"[A] thrilling leap into alternative history . . . a murder mystery that doesn’t let up . . . Like the city and world it depicts, this is a complicated book that offers many layers of pleasure. . . . Above all, there’s the joy that comes from seeing a profusion of love and care poured into a fully original piece of work." —Financial Times
“Gutsy and atmospheric . . . [a] generous slice of noir.” —Mail on Sunday
“A rich and fluently imagined alternate history . . . vivid and varied . . . Spufford’s skill at keeping you reading, sentence after sentence, is for me up there with writers like David Mitchell.” —Locus Magazine
"Sure to be one of the most distinctly imagined texts of the year, in any genre.” —Crime Reads
"Francis Spufford is a literary sorcerer with one of the great imaginations of our time. When a new book lands, I drop everything and start reading. Cahokia Jazz takes us to an America that wasn't... a wilder, richer, altogether more enchanting America. Bullets and beatings provide the percussion to Spufford's hothouse jazz noir, while hope and heartbreak do a dizzying, drunken foxtrot together. I can't remember the last time suspense and spiritual longing were so tightly braided together in a single novel. A masterpiece.” —Joe Hill
“Stylish and ambitious ... [Spufford’s] most crowd-pleasing novel yet.” —The Times
“A taut, unguessable whuddunit, painted in ultrablack noir. . . . It's got gorgeously described jazz music, a richly realized modern indigenous society, and a spectacular romance. . . . amazing . . . a book that fires on every cylinder.” —Cory Doctorow
"The book is itself Cahokia jazz; the play of possibilities beyond the linear progression of the tune we all already know, that goes to wild places and then winds back, beautifully, heartbreakingly, to echo the notes of where it started." —Jo Baker, bestselling author of Longbourn
“Cahokia Jazz is a delight.” —Sunday Telegraph
"Francis Spufford has discovered a new riff on a favorite tune, and in exploring it has created something wholly unique. Cahokia Jazz is extraordinary." —Mick Herron, author of Slow Horses
"A vibrant thriller set in an alternative history . . . ambitious and consequential. Spufford’s prose is energetic and rhythmic, yet his theme—namely racial politics in the US today—couldn’t be weightier.” —New Statesman
“This richly imagined and densely plotted story refreshes the crime genre and acts as a fun house mirror reflection of contemporary attitudes toward race—all set to a thumping jazz age soundtrack. Standing alongside Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker series and Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, this is a challenging evocation of an America that never was.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Cahokia Jazz is a novel about finding one’s place in the world. It is haunting, wholly memorable, and will leave you with an ache.” —Times Literary Supplement
“One of the signal achievements of this exceptional novel is the generosity and rigour with which it conjures up Cahokia. Spufford’s creation absolutely feels like a place you could visit, or could have visited, if you happened to be travelling westward across the United States in the year of modernism, 1922. . . . As a piece of narrative entertainment, Cahokia Jazz is more or less unimprovable.” —Irish Times
“Gritty. . . . Spufford has written an astounding homage to noir mysteries. A poignant drama-filled novel that his fans and readers of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian will thoroughly enjoy.” —Library Journal
10/01/2023
This gritty noir murder mystery by Spufford (Light Perpetual) will hook readers with its fully realized tableau of an alternative history where the Indigenous populations in North America thrive rather than being decimated after encountering colonial forces. Realistically envisioned characters populate the pages, while the historical 1920s are on full display. Jazz, Prohibition, and political corruption are tightly and vividly interwoven with the subtle changes to society and culture that such an alternative trajectory may have produced. The Mississippian cultural capital of Cahokia is a flourishing city-state within the United Sates and is the gateway to the West. However, there are tensions behind the scenes in this metropolitan city, and one murder may undo centuries of progress. When Cahokia police detective Joe Barrow and his partner are called to a rooftop crime scene, little do they realize how this case will upend their lives and push them, and their city, on a path leading to either redemption or destruction. VERDICT Spufford has written an astounding homage to noir mysteries. A poignant drama-filled novel that his fans and readers of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian will thoroughly enjoy.—Laura Hiatt
Narrator Andy Ingalls delivers all the nuances of a full cast in Spufford's latest, a literary detective novel that takes place in an alternate universe. In an authoritative tone, Ingalls brings to life Cahokia, located on the banks of the Mississippi. In the novel, this ancient Indigenous society lives on in the 1920s, seeming to flourish in its diversity. But when Barrow discovers a mutilated body, the community's facade of racial coexistence is exposed. Whether Native American, European, or African, each principal character has a unique voice, aiding the listener in following the complex story. Ingalls's skills shine as he smoothly delivers conversations in a hillbilly drawl, an Irish brogue, and the many other voices of the diverse characters. Ingalls is the perfect guide for this complex world. N.E.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
★ 2023-12-06
A brutal murder threatens to set off a race war in alternative-history Illinois.
In reality, Cahokia was an ancient Native American settlement across the Mississippi River from what’s now St. Louis. In Spufford’s cleverly conceived, well-made police procedural, it’s the hub of a thriving Native-led U.S. state in 1922. Native leadership there is stubbornly opposed by local whites, and the Klan is ascendant. So the murder of a white man on the roof of a downtown building, made to look like an Aztec sacrifice, is a powder keg. Was the killing committed by Natives pushing back against prejudice, or whites stirring tensions to stage a government overthrow? Joe Barrow, a Cahokia police detective investigating the case, is quickly enmeshed not just in the murder but in the politics of a city on edge. (A country, too: Mormons are agitating for their own state out west, and tensions have flared on the border of Alaska, still Russian territory.) Spufford has cleverly thought through all the Risk-board elements of this setup, from Cahokia’s industries, to the intersection of Native folkways and Catholicism, to the city’s various ethnic enclaves. (A lengthy afterword delivers a plausible case for its creation.) But at heart the novel is a straightforward, smart noir, with Joe torn among his police duties, his sideline as a talented piano player at a local club, an erratic white detective partner, a budding romance, and his own grim upbringing in an orphanage. The concept owes a debt to Michael Chabon’s 2007 counterfactual detective yarn, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, but Joe is an original invention, steeped in complex history—a “Mississippian fusion” of European, American, and Native ideas—and torn over what do for himself, his city, and his culture.
A richly entertaining take on the crime story, and a country that might’ve been.
