Blue Moon

Rating:
Summary: Highly unrealistic nostalgic fun
Review: Ah yes, this is full of nostalgia, maybe almost but not quite to the point of irritation.

Philip Damon, bearing a strong resemblance to band leader/co-author Peter Duchin, plays amateur detective when a man accompanying a woman who is remarkably similar in appearance to Damon's murdered wife is himself murdered. Hobnobbing with practically every celebrity who was prominent in 1963, he investigates the murder much to the consternation of black San Francisco Police Inspector Hercules Platt who is having his own problem convincing his superiors and those he deals with that he is a very capable inspector.

This is a light-hearted portrayal of the early '60's alluding to the social changes going on at the time including racial issues, growing drug use, rock & roll replacing swing era music, and acceptance of gays, as well as providing us with an old-fashioned type of mystery featuring the amateur sleuth.

Rating:
Summary: buy it. buy it now.
Review: Great book. Well-written, humorous, well-plotted. I look forward to more books in what could be a well-done series. I'm a big fan of John Morgan Wilson's Justice series and while this is not as dark as those can be, it is well worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: Readable, But Only Just
Review: Peter Duchin, of course, is the son of the celebrated bandleader Eddie Duchin, a noted musician in his own right, and the author of the well-received memoir GHOST OF A CHANCE. John Morgan Wilson is a journalist, screenwriter, and Edgar-winning author of the Benjamin Justice mystery-novel series. Together they have created Philip Damon, a bandleader who bears a notable resemblance to co-author Duchin and who finds himself at the center of mystery, murder, and mayhem in 1963 San Francisco: several years earlier Damon's beloved wife Diana was strangled to death in their New York apartment; now Damon has returned to the city where they first met, and as he and his band begin to play Diana's double walks into the room on the arm of one the city's rich and powerful, and murder is not far behind.

It sounds interesting, but it isn't. The plot reads rather like an extremely improbable mixture of Charlie Chan, The Thin Man, and Vertigo with a splash of circa-1963 political correctness thrown in for good measure--and it is rendered with such an excessive degree of period charm that it's a wonder the writers didn't expire from nostalgia overdose. They are also tiresomely celebrity conscious, working hard to introduce such famous names as Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak, and Truman Capote on virtually every page and to a remarkably tiresome degree. Before the novel ends, we've had stolen pearls, mysterious trips to the Chinatown, drag queens, and enough references to various musicians of the era to sink a boat, much less a novel. Now, all of this might be forgiven--including what I thought was a rather obvious double-edged solution--were it not for the fact that the style is very stiff and the characters are extremely inconsistent, shifting from naughty to nice without seeming provocation.

One of the characters in the novel, Charlene, is fond of reading murder mysteries. Toward the end of the novel she notes that she is presently reading a new Dorothy Sayers mystery novel. Unfortunately, in 1963 Sayers hadn't published a mystery novel in more than twenty years; indeed, Sayers herself had been dead for six. This is hardly the first time the authors fiddle dates in the book, but hey, why let plausibility get in the way? And indeed, this is indicative of the novel as a whole. Final take: it is readable, but it isn't something you'll read again, it won't make you a fan of the Duchin-Wilson writing team, and there are many much better mystery novels out there--several of Dorothy Sayers' among them.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer