Bop City Swing from Cowboy Jamboree Press San Francisco. 1951.
Jazz is alive. On radios and turntables. In the electrifying Fillmore clubs, where hepcats bring their bebop brilliance to attentive audiences. In the posh downtown venues where big bands swing in the marble ballrooms of luxury hotels.
That's where the story begins, with the assassination of a campaigning politician during a hotel ballroom fundraiser.
Homicide detective, Tom Keegan, is first on the scene. He's eager, impatient, hot on the heels of the gunman. Gunselle, killer for hire, is no longer there. She flew the coop, swept away in the rush of panicked guests.
They both want to crack the case. Tom, because he's never seen a puzzle he didn't want to solve, no matter what the rules say. Gunselle, because she was hired to take out the candidate and somebody beat her to it. It was a big paycheck. It hurts. In her professional pride and wallet.
The war has been over for six years, but the suffering and death, at home and abroad, lingers as a horror behind the eyes of some men. And one young woman.
Bop City Swing is the brainchild of Russell Thayer, author of the Gunselle stories, and M.E. Proctor, who occasionally takes a break from Declan Shaw, her Houston PI, to don Tom Keegan's gray fedora.
Praise for Bop City Swing "
Bop City Swing masterfully harkens back to the noir classics of yesteryear, with the soulfulness of a Charlie Parker riff on a foggy night."
-JD Clapp, author of
A Good Man Goes South "Sex, elegance and grit! Juicy pulp guaranteed. An absolute delight,
Bop City Swing lands a breath-taking punch to the gut."
-Ilyn Welch, author of
Bad Makes Bad "A wild ride down the neon-lit streets of post-WWII America, with bebop wailing in the nightclub on the corner, the white witch pumping through the veins of the junkie on the barstool, three slugs draining the life from the charismatic politician with a shady past, and enough snappy dialogue to light up the faces of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain."
-Douglas Lumsden, author of the
Alexander Southerland, P.I. Series "In
Bop City Swing, cigarettes dangle from the hands of cops as they sip booze and bump up against dames wearing swanky dresses in dark, smoky nightclubs. It's a good time!"
-Joel Nedecky, author of
The Broken Detective "Not since I discovered the pairings of King and Straub, or Billie Holiday and Artie Shaw have I been this excited about two talented artists working together. As Editor in Chief of Punk Noir Magazine I've worked with both Proctor and Thayer extensively and without a shadow of a doubt can wholeheartedly say they're two of the most literary gifted crime writers out there right now.
Bop City Swing is testament to Proctor and Thayer's crime writing talents. Proctor's stripped down and raw prose jives extraordinarily well with Thayer's emotive and visceral story-telling, propelling the narrative to the gripping and explosive finale of this MUST READ crime novel of 2025!!"
-Stephen J. Golds, author of
Say Goodbye When I'm Gone
