Debbie Burke

Jerry Zolotov, a smooth jazz musician adored by fans for decades and with several platinum albums to his name, was at his wit's end. If he receives one more bouquet of black roses with a threatening note, he would hang up his sequined jumpsuit and throw his saxophone into the Atlantic Ocean, just minutes from his home in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. The musician had recently purchased a once-in-a-lifetime piece of history: a Russian "bone record," produced on discarded X-rays during the Cold War and sold on the black market. The record was the Holy Grail of jazz contraband, and it had a very special provenance—and, as it turned out, a very dangerous one. Meanwhile, in the nearby neighborhood of Little Odessa, radiology tech Becka Rifkin was dying to reconnect with an old flame who had moved back to Russia. Then he happened to mention a newly discovered bone record that had just become available. Unable to turn down the chance to own this very rare collectible, Becka booked her flight. When Jerry Z was found bobbing in the Verrazano Narrows, Becka became embroiled in the unthinkable. KIRKUS REVIEWS calls it "gritty and flecked with colorful details...There’s lots of imagination on display in these pages, and Burke paints an evocative portrait of the jazz musicians, aficionados, and mobsters of Brooklyn’s Eastern European community." Jazz fiction - a murder mystery !