LOOKING FOR CHET BAKER: AN EVAN HORNE MYSTERY
(Walker & Company)
In Looking For Chet Baker, Evan Horne is an accomplished jazz pianist who does some sleuth work on the side. Recovering physically and emotionally from an intimate brush with a serial killer, Horne heads to Amsterdam, where American jazz musicians are treated like royalty.
Ace Buffington, a college professor buddy of Horne's, tracks him down to pitch the idea of putting their heads together on a book about Chet Baker. It was in Amsterdam in 1988 that Baker was found dead on the sidewalk beneath his hotel window. Whether he was pushed, fell or jumped has never been determined, though Buffington hopes Horne can help him uncover the truth. Still rattled from his latest case, Horne declines the job, preferring to concentrate instead on his upcoming gigs.
Buffington disappears under suspicious circumstances, though, and before long Horne is crisscrossing Holland, retracing Chet Baker's last days because he thinks someone is forcing Buffington to do the same.
Horne considers himself a musician first and foremost, and when he encounters lowlifes from Baker's drug-addled last days, he's enraged at the lack of respect shown towards the memory of a jazz legend. Junkie or not, Baker had a remarkable gift that he continued to give whenever and wherever he could, even after a brutal beating robbed him of his teeth, and heroin sickness robbed him of everything but music.
Bill Moody spins a tasteful, respectful tale around the real-life circumstances of Baker's death. He insightfully explores the interplay between Horne and Fletcher Paige, an expatriate saxophone player, as well as Baker's impact on the pair and jazz in general. Some of the best passages are not about the unfolding mystery of Buffington's disappearance, but about how Horne and Paige improvise and play off of each other onstage. It's a valuable perspective for even a novice jazz fan.
Moody's characters sparkle with life, and the text moves along at a comfortable clip. Here and there are niggling questions of motive and plausibility, and at only 253 pages, the love interest with an English filmmaker certainly deserves more than a couple of passing mentions.
After some of the weightier tomes that have crossed this desk this year, though, Looking for Chet Baker feels like a cleansing of the palate, a colorful summer read. Moody hasn't created a book for the ages, though he's certainly done what he set out to do: entertain the reader. Brian Briscoe [buy it]
