Murder on the Downbeat

MURDER ON THE DOWNBEAT It was a 4 A.M. jam session in a dim, smoke-filled cafe in Harlem. The famed Gold Coast Boys were giving. It was beautiful, urgent music. It was music with technique, inventiveness and imagination. And over all was the rhythm, the steady one-TWO-three-FOUR--the beat everyone would still hear pounding in his head the next day. Then a girl's screams, mysterical and prolonged, brought musicians and audience back to this world. Steve Sisson, greatest hot clarinetist in jazz history, lay slumped on a table, a thin steel spike deep in his brain. Malachy Bliss, jazz authority and columnist, plunged into solving the murder, for his girl, Julie Mitchell, was one of the first suspects jailed. But neither Malachy nor the police worked quickly enough to forestall the murder of a great Negro trombonist. Blues shouters, jazz musicians, Harlem racketeers and their personal thugs became quickly involved. "Murder on the Downbeat" is tense, colorful and baffling to the end.