Free Form Jazz: A Ray Tate and Djuna Brown Mystery

Ray Tate and Djuna Brown Mystery #1

by Lee Lamothe

Disgraced city cop Ray Tate and outcast state trooper Djuna Brown track down a wealthy sexual sadist and a depressed career criminal flooding a Midwestern U.S. city with killer ecstasy pills. Mismatched and mutually suspicious of each other, Tate and Brown hunt the mythic Captain Cook and his henchman, the homicidal Phil Harvey. But as Captain Cook sinks deeper into a spiral of sexual depravity, Phil Harvey begins to question his role as a lifelong gangster.

Tate and Brown discover, as they sift through the rubble left by their targets, that no one is what they appear to be not even themselves. Travelling through the Chinese underworld, clandestine drug laboratories, and biker-ridden badlands, the troubled duo encounter murder, political corruption, police paranoia, and psychosis, but can they find redemption?

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Lee Lamothe is a journalist and novelist. He is the author of Global Mafia, Criminal Acts II, Angels, Mobsters and Narco-terrorists, as well as the bestsellers Bloodlines: The Rise and Fall of the Mafia's Royal Family, The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto and The Last Thief, a novel. He lives in Toronto.

Series:
* Ray Tate and Djuna Brown Mystery

Reviews

[Timothy Neesam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a real ride. It's incredibly profane and the bad guy is really, really nasty, but the book also has moments of real poetry, and the dialogue sings. Both sets of main characters really click in their separate ways. It's actually difficult to say which of the characters is most fully developed and well drawn. This book is a winner, once you get over the fucking swearing. Two thumbs up.

[Vontel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book by an author whose books I haven't read before. A little gritty, but good character and plot development. From Lamothe's website: "hard-boiled series set in a fictional spot on the U.S.-Canada border where Detective Ray Tate and Djuna Brown solve cases no one wants solved in a city where law may just be the last man (or woman) with a gun". I'm looking forward to reading the next one(s).