The piano player Evan Horne becomes a private eye by accident. His hand has been hurt in a car crash, he is concerned that he may never reach his former expressiveness or professionalism again. His love life is not exactly in good shape either. With time to spare, he discovers a talent for detective work. The two metiers have an organic link.
Dependable instinct is essential for both.
In the context of good yarns well told, with humor and suspense and without hammering the reader on the head with it, Bill Moody's murder mysteries present jazz musicians as basically positive, mostly interesting people. They are the good guys. Obvious exceptions notwithstanding, this perspective is, oversimplified or not, about as close to ''real life'' as most generalizations can be. Evan Horne and the other musicians are portrayed as more intelligent and trustworthy than the baddies, who are hypocritical, insensitive, misinformed. As film music, jazz was reduced to being the threatening sound accompanying emotionally disturbed and uncouth people doing naughty things - Gerry Mulligan over an alcoholic's misadventures, Duke Ellington punctuating the miseries of a heroin addict, Miles Davis accompanying murder and mayhem on dark, empty, threatening streets.