Welcome to Litsy!

When Buddy Bolden died in a Louisiana insane asylum in 1931, a quarter century after his meteoric rise and precipitous fall as the undisputed first "king" of jazz, he left behind no known recordings. But when quirky New Orleans antiques dealer Bruneau Abellard listens to a vintage phonograph cylinder, which he found in the secret compartment of a sideboard he had purchased at auction, he wonders if he has stumbled upon an important piece of missing history. In researching his discovery, Bruneau runs headlong into an arson investigation led by his childhood friend, NOPD Detective Bo Duplessis, which in turn may hold the key to a 50-year-old unsolved missing person case. In The Bolden Cylinder, as in author Norman Woolworth's first Bruneau Abellard novel, The Lafitte Affair, a 2024 Kirkus Reviews "Best of Indie" selection, Bruneau and Bo must piece together a perplexing string of puzzles from the distant past if they are to untangle their present-day mysteries. Their parallel investigations immerse them in the rhythm-and-blues subculture of 1960s New Orleans; and transport them to the dawn of the 20th Century, when a brash young musician introduced a new sound to the city, forever changing the course of music history. The Lafitte Affair introduced readers to a memorable cast of characters, most of whom appear again in The Bolden Cylinder -- where they are joined by, among others, a malodorous collector of early R&B memorabilia; a sultry nightclub singer; a reputed mob boss; a 12-year-old tap dancer; and an inscrutable peddler of voodoo paraphernalia. Together, they serve up a savory gumbo of suspenseful intrigue set against the seductive backdrop of a city in which past and present are forever interwoven.