Lazy Sunday Service

Just made a quick trip to Birmingham, flying over Friday back Saturday afternoon. Picked up Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues in the terminal in Dublin. First paragraph sold it to me.

Chip told us not to go out. Said, don't you boys tempt the devil. But it had been a brawl of a night, I tell you, all of us still reeling from the rot - rot was cheap, see, the drink of French peasants, but it stayed like nails in your gut. Didn't even look right, all mossy and black in the bottle. Like drinking swamp water.

Backcover blurb runs thus:

The aftermath of the fall of Paris, 1940. Hieronymous Falk, a rising star on the cabaret scene, was arrested in a cafe and never heard from again. He was twenty years old. He was a German citizen. And he was black. Fifty years later, Sid, Hiero's bandmate and the only witness that day, is going back to Berlin. Persuaded by his old friend Chip, Sid discovers there's more to the journey than he thought when Chip shares a mysterious letter, bringing to the surface secrets buried since Hiero's fate was settled. Half Blood Blues weaves the horror of betrayal, the burden of loyalty and the possibility that, if you don't tell your story, someone else might tell it for you. And they just might tell it wrong ...

Looking forward to this one. If the first couple of pages is sustained it's going to be a cracker.

My posts this week:
Review of Frozen Out by Quentin Bates
When computers fail ...
Review of Bloodland by Alan Glynn
New Aussie Kelly hero
Silence and lies