DRUMSTICKS by Charlotte Carter
(Serpent's Tail PB £10.00 pp213)
As Serpent's Tail publish Charlotte Carter's third Nanette Hayes mystery in a trade paperback, they are re-issuing the first in their Five Star series. (They publish the second, COQ AU VIN, too).
She looks like Grace Jones, only better. I'd like to meet Nanette - you would, too. If you are a man that is because Nan just oozes sex appeal; if you are a woman, well, Nan is the sort that everybody likes. Be warned, though. People who hang around with Nan tend to drop dead - she starts every book with a lot more friends than she ends with.
Nan doesn't have much of a centre in her life. As RHODE ISLAND RED begins she is scraping a living as a street entertainer, playing jazz on her saxophone, having an on/off relationship with her black yuppie boyfriend, before another street musician who has crashed on the floor of her New York appointment never wakes up. Someone with an icepick has seen to that. It isn't long before Nan discovers that he was an undercover cop - the investigating detectives find it hard to believe that he would want to go back to Nan's place, though she escapes the full third degree. What Nan can't understand, though, is why none of them mention the "old lady" he had talked about, and she has to go looking.
Still, looking doesn't pay the rent. Things on that front improve when an older guy starts dropping dead presidents wrapped around roses in her hat, and then asks her to improve his knowledge of Charlie Parker - she finds his apartment is a shrine to "The Bird". Strange tastes for a obvious mobster, huh? Not so strange as when she goes back to find the apartment empty and the building superintendent denies any knowledge of his former denizen.
Here's a good line of business. Sell a piece to Nanette - she pays and gets through them like a rock star through a line of snow. But they never get used before they're lost, and she never learns. Don't worry, though, the people round her use them plenty.
In COQ AU VIN Nanette goes to Paris. She's back for DRUMSTICKS and those pieces are still in action. Someone is shooting anyone to do with the New York rap scene, and more. Nanette is so pleased to get a residency that she has invited another street seller to come along on her first night. Scarcely has Ida the doll maker walked through the club door than she has been gunned down. The police wonder about the true target, and this time Nanette is able to work with them in a more formal way. Until now, Nanette's ear for jazz has allowed her to block out the increasingly ubiquitous rap music, but she has to discover how enormous an industry it has become, along with what people will do to take their share of its big profits. It takes her longer to discover what other people will do to keep their children out of it.
And boys, Nanette can show how friendly she can be even with a bullet through her leg and a married man in her arms. That's grrrl power, I believe.