When folklorist and ex-academe Fever Devilin wakes up from a three-month coma in a hospital bed at the start of A Corpse's Nightmare, the immediate mystery is why somebody tried to shoot him in his own home. He'll need to find the answer before the would-be assassin tries again, but the prolonged unconsciousness has called his mental health into question. Fever's uncertainty intensifies when he begins having visions of an African-American jazz musician, T-Bone Morton, and a white club owner, Lisa Simard, in 1920s Paris. What does their love story have to do with him?
This is the sixth book in Philip DePoy's Fever Devilin series, which has created a beautifully detailed world around the small town of Blue Mountain, Ga., and its inhabitants. DePoy is an Edgar-winning playwright (Easy), and it shows in the way the novel's characters are developed through strong dialogue, always tinged by humor and intellect. But he's also a master of tactile descriptions you can practically taste and smell. All these skills are on display in a masterful mystery that's difficult to unravel, hidden among the histories of war, race and jazz. --Sara Dobie, blogger at Wordpress