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David Fulmer appeared on a lot of ballots in 2002 for this first mystery and deservedly so. Chasing the Devil's Tail is a well-written book, set in the infamous Storyville district of New Orleans in 1907. Storyville, the "legal" red light district of the time, was a rather horrible place - wretched alcohol, drugs proffered by so-called doctors who themselves might be addicts, prostitution so open that guides were sold so visitors could find the preferred skin color, type of sex, religious affiliation for their use. It's in this place and time that Valentin St. Cyr, who is passing for white (a major issue in New Orleans as anywhere at the turn of the 20th century) is charged with finding out who is murdering prostitutes and leaving a black rose behind. One of the major suspects is his old friend, the non-too-stable Buddy Bolden. Buddy knew all the women, visited them shortly before his death and is apparently sinking into mental illness so deep that he seldom remembers where he has been. Bolden - a real person, somewhat responsible for the creation of jazz music - is a pathetic, maniacal, painfully sick man, who lives to play his horn. St. Cyr is possible the only friend he has - and St. Cyr desperately wants to clear Bolden's name. This is a vivid book and the drama of the place and time is captured well. St. Cyr is a fascinating character; one reason I liked reading about him is that he manages to deal with all parts of society - black , white, prostitute, cop, madam, thief, child, on an equal basis with equal respect. He knows he treads a very thin line; he's a former police officer who left the force after witnessing - and stopping - vicious abuse by a cop, who would appear to be typical of the force at the time - drunk, violent, power-mad and not above taking any form of bribe. He's not fooled by people, except maybe Buddy. I found this book harder to read the second time, possibly because the first time it was just so rich with image and story. The second time, I saw, as it were, the dust in the corners, the ugliness of the whorehouses in daylight. This is a very nasty place; people mistreat each other, laugh at those in trouble, misuse, use and abuse others. Not that it's not without merit; St. Cyr, for example, had come to the aid of a whore and develops a true liking of her, a real concern. There are people who look out for each other; St. Cyr here also has befriended Bellocq, another true-to-life denizen of Storyville, whose photos of the women of the district are notorious; they're not glamorized or romantic. Bellocq himself was disabled in a number of ways, and laughed at; but St. Cyr just treats him like anyone else. There are hints of voodoo, and its hold on many parts of New Orleans, as well as the power of the Church in this city. There are many levels of issues of race, here in the town that, I believe, invented actual words - quadroon, octoroon - to describe how much "Negro blood" someone had. Race, and skin color could not be ignored; and in some ways, it makes Valentin St. Cyr, who knows first-hand about the ugliness of racial hatred, able to move in circles where his employer cannot. And his employer? A white man with strong interests, both political and monetary, in Storyville's whorehouses, who also happens to be a state senator. What made it hard to read the second time around was realizing that no one really cared about Buddy, the wild man who is deteriorating mentally before their eyes. And part of that is that in 1907, there weren't a lot of options to treat, or understand mental illness. Along with the ugly words used in everyday Storyville, it became difficult for me at times to remember how bad things were for so many people. Not that Fulmer should have prettied it up; he tells it like it is and I respect that. Maybe that's what made it so hard - David Fulmer is showing us a world of 100 years ago, where so many people were lost, to drugs, to lynchings, to hatred, to all sorts of sicknesses and it's often difficult to witness. There were also a few phrases that started to bug me; I have a thing about "writhing lips", for example and hate reading that in a book. Lips don't; eyes don't whirl either, or twitch. And I don't understand how a character could walk, "thin arms and legs milling, a tottery spider". I tried and could not get this image for the life of me. Minor, truly minor complaints, but when a writer's descriptive abilities are good and then you trip over infelicitous word use like that, it can be distracting. Will I read the next book Fulmer writes? Absolutely. It's not a pretty world, but his talent pulled me in completely. His characters are fascinating, his pacing and story-telling abilities are awfully good. While they tell two very different stories, he reminds me of the excellent writer Robert Skinner, who also sets his books in historical New Orleans, and deals with issues of race and class. New Orleans brought us Bellocq, and Bolden, Louis Armstrong (who makes a cameo here) and Jelly Roll Morton (who also appears). And I love modern-day New Orleans, even with all its problems, and its history contributes to what it is today..
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, July 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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