An unstoppable narrative machine paced, with New Orleans in 1919 essential character

Surprisingly enough, Ray Celestin is an English author, who lives in London; amazingly enough because his first novel, Carnival (The Axemans Jazz in English, as more in keeping with the story told, but it is true that The Jazz lHomme the ax, this is more difficult to sell in French as Carnival), is entirely located in New Orleans in May 1919, in the middle of a wave of gruesome murders historically proven and just before a hurricane whose consequences are not unlike those of Katrina, and is fairly consistent dune state scholarship of the city. Less surprisingly, Celestin has written scripts for television and cinema; Carnival is actually an unstoppable rhythm as film or television Machine is easily imagine HBO into a highly efficient mini-series by simply almost transpose the novel into a screenplay. However, this miniseries would not meet the usual criteria of the detective genre, as seen as critical characters would die in the course of narration and, above all, distinct narrative son, which one would think that they are going to build, remain parallel with a wave junction between two of them at the end of volume, junction that could announce a "suite" at Carnival; in this sense, Carnival series, which nexiste not, could make the lunch True Detective.

Meanwhile, the novel is quite enough as unstoppable narrative machine, at pace but not exhausting, which sees no less than four beams from denquête of a series of gruesome murders: the victims skull smashed with an ax and a tarot card is deposited on the corpse Will embark on the trail of the killer Ida Davis, Secretary Pinkerton, power of a certain Lewis Armstrong, who was eighteen, John Riley, a journalist in search of sensational soaked Luca Dandrea, just a dirty cop dAngola out of the prison, and Michael Talbot, police and former partner Dandrea; everyone wants to discover the identity of the killer for his own motives, be they professional, linked to the mafia or motivated by the ambition, but most everyone will eventually discovered along a different path. These four tracks, with multiple ramifications, allow land on a majestic pedestal the true main character of this novel: New Orleans in 1919.

Indeed, with an impressive sense of realistic detail (from the first page of the novel, he refers to "pierce the streets where tufts of herbs"), Celestin takes the reader, following the four investigators, in a multi-racial city but where segregation is still dactualité and where racial tensions can sexacerber for the simple crossing of the bad neighborhood (and Ida Lewis lacking know a spell in the Irish neighborhood), a city davant prohibition but just after the return of traumatized the Great War and the closure of brothels of Storyville, a city where lon still rolling in carriages and where the Mafia is different from the big cities of the North because families come all "of the same city in Sicily, Monreale" especially a city that vibrates to the sound dune new music "pervasive" jazz, which the young Lewis will open other expressive possibilities in front dune crowd enthousiate ... All these aspects are reflected throughout Carnival, with consummate art of composition and dosage: Never drive the painful impression na BE faced an encyclopedic page, but it continues as long den learn about New Orleans, the city where lon bury the dead above the ground, and finally out as much on it as its own neighborhood while following the quadruple ongoing investigation and explored so the slums of the city.

The whole gives a novel that holds so that the study of naturalistic thriller, both characteristics sinterpénétrant. To which we add that the author has the expertise needed to integrate the thread of the narrative of police reports and other newspaper articles without that seem affected, to have fun and the bonus of a little game with intertextual oeuvre by Conan Doyle, quida appreciate so what ends up taste to Lewis Langlais Celestin by this narrative power doubled dune desire to show the reality of a city, joined the great Pelecanos Lehane or Americans, and this is not a small compliment. Crying masterpiece would be an exaggeration; say that this is a great thriller extremely well built and documented succession dune truth to discover in Carnival pages for fans of the genre.