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A review by infinitysbookshelf
Dead Man's Blues by Ray Celestin
4.0
I have finally caught up with this series! The 3rd book was one of the first books that I ever reviewed on my blog after I accidentally requested an ARC of it. I am so glad that I now have read the entire story so far and am really anticipating the fourth and final book in the series.
I really enjoyed the historical aspect of this book, as it takes place in Chicago under Capone, and it was interesting the amount of research he did into the topic. There was a scene at a golf course that I was curious about and I found a real interview with one of the people there. I can really understand how each book takes 3 years to research, but I wish I didn’t have to wait that long for the final book. The writing really allowed for complete immersion into the story, which really helped to increase my enjoyment of the book.
The characters were pretty good and I really enjoyed the gang members perspective in this one. His story was so tragic but he was trying to make the best of it. It was particularly interesting to see the detective characters’ stories knowing what happens to them in the third book.
The actual mystery portion was not done to my satisfaction. It felt really confusing and it was pretty much solved by the detectives going “I know what happened”. The actual reveal felt so convoluted and I still don’t know how the clues actually led to the result. This made the book very hard to get through until the very end. Once the actual mystery was solved and even before that there were also quite a few action sequences that were pretty good and were definitely a highlight of the book.
Finally I liked the way that this book took some really dark topics: murder, suicide and racial tension, and made a really interesting comparison between those themes with music and the mob. Musicians like Louis Armstrong are slowly being accepted by the mainstream music producers and the mob is really helping them through it. This historical comparison is really what is keeping me interested in this series and why I really need to read this next book.
I definitely liked this one better than the first book in the series, which I gave 3 stars and it feels on par with the 3rd book, which I gave 4 stars. It was altogether an interesting historical fiction novel with a really confusing mystery and interesting characters. What did everyone else think of this book? Leave a comment down below and Happy Reading!
4 stars
I really enjoyed the historical aspect of this book, as it takes place in Chicago under Capone, and it was interesting the amount of research he did into the topic. There was a scene at a golf course that I was curious about and I found a real interview with one of the people there. I can really understand how each book takes 3 years to research, but I wish I didn’t have to wait that long for the final book. The writing really allowed for complete immersion into the story, which really helped to increase my enjoyment of the book.
The characters were pretty good and I really enjoyed the gang members perspective in this one. His story was so tragic but he was trying to make the best of it. It was particularly interesting to see the detective characters’ stories knowing what happens to them in the third book.
The actual mystery portion was not done to my satisfaction. It felt really confusing and it was pretty much solved by the detectives going “I know what happened”. The actual reveal felt so convoluted and I still don’t know how the clues actually led to the result. This made the book very hard to get through until the very end. Once the actual mystery was solved and even before that there were also quite a few action sequences that were pretty good and were definitely a highlight of the book.
Finally I liked the way that this book took some really dark topics: murder, suicide and racial tension, and made a really interesting comparison between those themes with music and the mob. Musicians like Louis Armstrong are slowly being accepted by the mainstream music producers and the mob is really helping them through it. This historical comparison is really what is keeping me interested in this series and why I really need to read this next book.
I definitely liked this one better than the first book in the series, which I gave 3 stars and it feels on par with the 3rd book, which I gave 4 stars. It was altogether an interesting historical fiction novel with a really confusing mystery and interesting characters. What did everyone else think of this book? Leave a comment down below and Happy Reading!
4 stars