Moody, Bill 1941-

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MOODY, Bill 1941-

PERSONAL: Born September 27, 1941, in Webb City, MO; son of Hugh and Helen (Shaw) Moody; children: Sarah. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: University of Nevada, Las Vegas, M.A., 1987.

ADDRESSES: Home—Sonoma County, CA. Agent—Philip Spitzer, 50 Talmage Farm Lane, East Hampton, NY 11937.

CAREER: Jazz drummer, 1963—; freelance writer, 1968—; disc jockey and radio programmer, 1989-97. Former English instructor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA, creative writing instructor. Military service: United States Air Force, 1959-62.

MEMBER: Mystery Writers of America, International Crime Writers Association.

WRITINGS:

The Jazz Exiles: American Musicians Abroad (nonfiction), foreword by Stanley Dance, University of Nevada Press (Reno, NV), 1993.

novels

Solo Hand, Walker (New York, NY), 1994.

Death of a Tenor Man, Walker (New York, NY), 1995.

The Sound of the Trumpet, Walker (New York, NY), 1997.

Bird Lives!, Walker (New York, NY), 1999.

Looking for Chet Baker, Walker (New York, NY), 2002.

ADAPTATIONS: Death of a Tenor Man has been optioned for a film and is under development with Steve Jones.

SIDELIGHTS: Starting out with a single premise, jazz drummer and writer Bill Moody continually asks himself "the 'what if' and 'why' questions as I'm writing," as he explained to Jesse Hamlin in the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's a discovery process as you go," Moody further noted. This jazz-like composition practice is utilized in Moody's mystery novels, which draw on his own background as a jazz musician. His detective character Evan Horne is a jazz pianist whose cases involve the world of nightclubs, recording studios, and crooked agents. "I'm always fascinated by stuff that hasn't been figured out," he told Hamlin.

Moody explained in an article for Writer's Digest that he first thought of a "jazz detective" in 1968 while playing in a jazz band in Czechoslovakia. When the Soviet Army invaded the country during his stay there, Moody wrote about the turmoil for several music magazines. He also began speculating about a jazz musician spy character. "A jazz musician spy hadn't been done," he remembered in Writer's Digest, "nor had Prague during that hectic period figured prominently in an espionage novel. I knew both character and place. I figured it a sure winner." Unfortunately, Moody's espionage novel could not find a publisher. But one editor suggested he try a mystery instead. Moody gave it a try: "I put the spy novels aside and created a jazz musician turned amateur sleuth caught up in the backstabbing record business."

In Solo Hand Moody introduced jazz pianist Evan Horne. As the novel opens, Horne is in Los Angeles recovering from an automobile accident that has injured his right hand—the hand he needs most for piano solos. He becomes involved in a mystery when someone tries to blackmail singer Lonnie Cole, whom Evan has accompanied. Cole has just done a duet album with a famous country singer, and the mail brings a package of photographs of him and the country artist caught in embarrassing circumstances at a party, along with a request that Horne deliver a million-dollar extortion fee. In order to convince Cole that he is not involved in the plot himself, Horne undertakes the investigation, intent on discovering who is behind the blackmail attempt. In the process, Horne winds up knocked unconscious in a marina but triumphs despite his novice status as a sleuth. A Publishers Weekly reviewer praised Solo Hand as "entertaining" and further noted that "Moody's portrayals of the backstabbing music industry and a royalties scam ring true."

Moody puts his knowledge of jazz history to use when Evan Horne reappears in Death of a Tenor Man. This time Horne is in Las Vegas assuaging boredom by assisting with a friend's research into the death of real-life jazz tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray in 1955—a death officially attributed to a drug overdose. He is also playing unobtrusive piano at a shopping mall in the gambler's paradise, trying to get his injured hand back into shape for more demanding performances. While helping look up the facts on Gray's demise, Horne is threatened with bodily harm by organized criminal henchmen if he does not give up his inquiry, but this only piques him to peer more closely at the available information. On the trail of answers, Horne also discovers much about the racial tension in Las Vegas's past—Gray's body was found in the desert outside the city the day after he wielded his saxophone at the brand-new Moulin Rouge, which was the first Las Vegas casino and hotel open to both whites and African Americans. Moody ornaments Death of a Tenor Man with other real jazz stories and musicians besides the late Wardell Gray, according to another Publishers Weekly critic, who went on to assert that the author "exhibits perfect pitch when writing lovingly about music…. These pages sing." Marilyn Stasio, writing in the New York Times Book Review, also applauded Moody's efforts in Death of a Tenor Man. She called Evan Horne an "immensely likable hero" and declared that in this "sad, bluesy story" many other characters "have life and soul." Bill Ott in Booklist concluded that "the Vegas setting is nicely realized, and the use of the real-life Gray case proves fascinating, especially to jazz fans."

The Sound of the Trumpet finds Horne helping a friend with some studio tapes that may have been recorded by 1950s jazz trumpet legend Clifford Brown. While trying to verify whether they are Brown's recordings, Horne lands in the middle of a murder investigation when the owner of the disputed tapes dies. "Moody uses his musical knowledge to introduce a gallery of colorful figures … and delivers a distinctively pleasurable, if not especially compelling, mystery," according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. Rex E. Klett in Library Journal called the novel "well written, plausible, and down to earth," while Ott, writing in Booklist, called the novel "a must for jazz fans, who will appreciate Moody's grasp of the music."

Speaking to Michael Bourne in Down Beat, Moody speculated as to just when Evan Horne's injured hand may allow him to return full-time to a career as a jazz pianist and leave the amateur detective work behind. "I let him play a little in Death of a Tenor Man and The Sound of the Trumpet," Moody commented to Bourne, "and his hand is getting better. He's eager to get on with his career in music, of course, but in the next book he'll have a much more compelling reason to get involved in the story. In the last two books, he's been helping his friend Ace with what appears to be some simple research and gets caught up. But, sometimes, that's the way things happen. You start to do something that you think will be easy and uncomplicated, and before you know it, you're way in over your head."

In Horne's fourth outing, Bird Lives!, he does battle with a serial killer who is busily killing smooth-jazz saxophonists and leaving behind bird feathers on their corpses as a morbid sort of clue for jazz aficionados. With Looking for Chet Baker, fifth in the series, Moody deals with the real-life mystery surrounding the death of the great jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, who was found dead on the sidewalk outside the Amsterdam hotel where he was staying; however, it was never determined whether he had fallen, jumped, or was pushed out of the window to his death. In the book, Horne has now recovered enough from the hand injury to try and get his career back online with a gig in Amsterdam. His old friend, Ace Buffington, a professor of English, contacts him in hopes of getting Horne's help with research on a book about Baker. Though Horne turns his friend down, he is soon very much involved, as he has been lodged into the same hotel in Amsterdam where Baker died, and also the same, it now appears, from which Buffington has also suddenly gone missing. All the professor's research materials have been left behind, and now Horne grows concerned. Tracing the whereabouts of his missing friend, he also must follow Baker in his last days, hoping both trails will lead to Buffington.

Moody's tale of mystery and historical reconstruction won positive critical attention. Katy Munger, writing in the Washington Post Book World, found it to be a "wonderful variation on a familiar theme." Munger further felt that Moody's inside knowledge of jazz and the life of traveling jazz musicians help to create descriptions that "resonate with a passion that makes this book sing." Dick Lochte, writing in the Los Angeles Times, also thought that Moody's book "hits all the right notes" and ventured that the book has the "potential for turning mystery lovers into jazz fans. And vice versa." For Booklist's Ott, Looking for Chet Baker is the "best in a steadily improving series," and Klett, writing in Library Journal, found the book "intricately described, carefully paced, and gently suspenseful." Peter Cannon, reviewing the novel in Publishers Weekly, had further praise, commenting that Moody "does a wonderful job of re-creating [Chet Baker] and his times." Julius Lester, writing in the Los Angeles Times, commended Moody's "wonderful mystery series" in total, singling out Looking for Chet Baker for its "fluid" writing, "tight" plot, and the "wealth of interesting minor characters." And similarly, Gene Santoro, in the New York Times Book Review, praised Moody as a "fluent writer with a good ear for dialogue, a deft and ingratiating descriptive touch, a talent for characterization, and a genuine feel for the jazz world."

Shortly after publication of this fifth novel in the series, Moody's publishers, Walker, announced that it would be ceasing publication of its mystery line. Moody's next Evan Horne mystery will need to find a new home. But for the author, accustomed to the everchanging venues of a jazz musician, such dislocations are par for the course. Moody once told CA: "Perseverance and believing in your work are probably the two most important factors in getting published. Don't give up one publisher too soon."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Booklist, October 15, 1995, Bill Ott, review of Death of a TenorMan, p. 388; February 15, 1997, Bill Ott, The Sound of the Trumpet, p. 1007; February 15, 2002, Bill Ott, review of Looking for Chet Baker, pp. 995-996.

Down Beat, June, 1997, Michael Bourne, review of The Sound of the Trumpet, p. 14.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2002, review of Looking for Chet Baker, p. 20.

Library Journal, January, 1997, Rex E. Klett, review of The Sound of the Trumpet, p. 152; February 1, 2002, Rex E. Klett, review of Looking for Chet Baker, p. 135.

Los Angeles Times, March 27, 2002, Dick Lochte, review of Looking for Chet Baker, p. E2; May 10, 2002, Don Heckman, review of Looking for Chet Baker, p. F21; May 12, 2002, Julius Lester, review of Looking for Chet Baker, p. R6.

New York Times Book Review, January 7, 1996, Marilyn Stasio, review of Death of a Tenor Man, p. 24; April 7, 2002, Gene Santoro, review of Looking for Chet Baker, p. 29.

Publishers Weekly, December 20, 1993, review of Solo Hand, p. 53; October 23, 1995, review of Death of a Tenor Man, pp. 60-61; December 16, 1996, review of The Sound of the Trumpet, p. 45; January 7, 2002, Peter Cannon, review of Looking for Chet Baker, p. 49.

San Francisco Chronicle, March 16, 2002, Jesse Hamlin, "Moody's Clues: Jazz Drummer Delves into the Mysteries of the Music World in His Novels," p. D1.

Washington Post Book World, March 31, 2002, Katy Munger, review of Looking for Chet Baker, p. 13.

Writer's Digest, February, 1996, p. 6.