Matador Paperback ISBN 1-904744-96-6
The second book in this series of murder mysteries looks at Timbers' life in 1964
Jazz Notes in New Murder Mystery
(The author offers some notes on the jazz aspects of this novel.)
The Timberdick books are a series of murder stories set in the sleazy back-streets of a south coast seaport in the 1960’s. The amateur detective is a call-girl who solves the mysteries by listening carefully to what people say. “I got there by thinking, not by fingerprints,” she tells her policeman in the first novel.
Liking Good Jazz is about murder, not jazz. The jazz in the title is a euphemism close to the original root of the word. However, some of the victim’s jazz collection come into the possession of a pot-bellied, work-shy policeman. First, there are five bootleg 78’s. “There’s no proof that Jimmy McPartland is the jazzman,” he says. “But when I showed them to an experienced dealer, she immediately offered an account of their manufacture in Birmingham, England.”
Then he acquires a curious E.P. “It’s a 7 inch extended play on a French label I’ve never heard of. The record label’s coarse and faded and the sleeve’s poorly printed on cheap paper. I can’t make head nor tail of the writing but the record’s called The Ladies Jazz Orchestra at the Metropol Restaurant 1935 and 6” This is Vera Dmitrievna Dneprova and her All Girl Jazz Band. She was arrested on 15 December 1937 ‘Just seven years before your Glenn Miller died,’ says a Russian.
When Timberdick asks him about his favourite jazz record, our lazy constable has no hesitation. “That’s No Bargain by Red Nichols and The Redheads. It would have to be the Perfect Records version. There are others on Brunswick and Vocalion, but there not so good.” The choice should not surprise us. He has already told us about his favourite school of jazz.
“Jazz is five boys in a New York hotel room,” he tells a teenage rock ‘n’ roller. “They play the music they’ve learned from black records. Room 1411 is one, by Benny Goodman and his Boys with Jimmy and Glen. They’d be leading their own bands in five years but these are the days when they’re working hard at it.”
“Yeah, like The Beatles in Hamburg.”
“No,” says the policeman. “Nothing like The Beatles in Hamburg.”