This is a noir murder mystery, set in the 1920s in an alternate history where the Native American city of Cahokia was never abandoned, and was also never fully integrated into the United States. The city is still ruled by Native Americans. The main character is detective Barrow, a large Native American man who is initially known more for his brawl than his brains, but circumstances require him to put his intelligence to use. He did not grow up in Cahokia, so a lot of Cahokia's ways are foreign to him, which makes him a good character for the reader to follow, so that we can learn about Cahokia's culture as he does.

As a noir mystery, this book is fantastic: the mystery is truly surprising, with lots of twists and turns that end up involving a lot of powerful people. On top of that, the world-building is thoughtful, thorough, and adds extra dimensions to the mystery. The characters are well-developed and lively. Parts of the book get a little bit sappy, but that's fitting with the noir genre. This is one of those delightful books that is not only very entertaining and engaging, but also very well-written. ( )

An entertainingly pulpy alternate history mystery - like Robert Harris meets Dashiell Hammett. There is quite a LOT going on, which detracts slightly from the fun, but that's the butterfly effect, I suppose... ( )

To be honest, this novel was not calling out to me when I picked it up, and that I read it now was mostly a matter of availability. That said, I'll give Spufford full credit for coming up with an ingenious scenario to allow for a Native American polity influencing United States' history in a sustained fashion.

As for the novel itself, the crisis in play is a cross between the planter overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, and the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, and the countdown is on for disaster. Into this situation is thrown one Joe Barrow, a police detective who, in the process of sorting out a murder that looks like a ritual sacrifice, takes the reader through the ins and outs of the Cahokia of the Spufford's imagination.

So, cutting to the point; did I actually like the story? Basically, yes. I do think that the length needed to build the setting conflicts a little with the demands of a murder thriller to keep things economical and direct. This is besides my sense that Barrow's personal climax is a little pulpy compared to the rest of the novel. Still, if one is interested in alternate history as a genre, and 1920s America as a setting, you do owe it to yourself to give this novel a try. ( )

Spufford has equalled his excellent novel of old New York, Golden Hill, with a tale set in a 1920s America whose Native American people, never decimated by disease as in our world, maintained their civilizations and came to a significantly different accommodation with the European invaders. The former nation of Cahokia, its capital city across the river from the tiny village of St. Louis, chose to enter the Union as a state in the nineteenth century and is now a bustling center of commerce and a crossroads to the Western states. Detective Joe Barrow, an Indian but an outsider with origins in a Nebraska orphanage, and his white partner Phineas Drummond come across the body of a white man “sacrificed” in grisly fashion at the top of the city’s tallest skyscraper. Was it the work of radical Native nationalists? Or of a cabal of white supremacists stoking the flames of racial tension?

Barrow and Drummond’s investigation has them interviewing everyone from wealthy industrialists to witch doctors, from Klan members to hereditary (but now ceremonial) royalty. All have both open and secret agendas, and no one is entirely who they seem to be. Can the murder be solved before the KKK marches into the central plaza and the city breaks down into chaos?

This being by Spufford, the noir setup frames a story about the individual and his responsibility to respond to the moral failings of his time. In Golden Hill, the issue was the slave trade. In Cahokia Jazz, the issue, put most simply, is race—but more broadly, the balance one must find between loyalty to individuals and loyalty to one’s people. It’s difficult to describe how rich this book is in world-building detail, how emotionally convincing, how vivid in painting a Jazz Age metropolis that’s like Chicago but also like nothing we’ve seen: a city that makes the real-life cultural fusion of New Orleans seem simple by comparison.

Spufford keeps writing the books that I would try to write if I were a writer, and writing them better than anyone could humanly expect. ( )

Alternate history of America, where Native Americans are preeminent, and this present-day extinct city is sited near today's St. Louis. Two policemen try to solve a murder. What was most striking was the world-building. ( )