TOO DEAD TO SWING

In 1940, a woman can’t get a job in male-dominated swing bands except as a singer. But when violinist Lois Duncan falls (or is pushed) off a bridge, unemployed Katy Green goes in a few hours from pounding the LA pavements to sharing a Pullman car with the Ultra Belles, an all-girl band. The irony of the band’s name is not lost on Katy. Liquor and drugs and sex, and talking about them, comprise the brassy Belles’ favorite pastimes. Bandleader Ted Nywatt, a songwriting lothario who’s bedded half the Belles, including Katy, spends most of his time reminding them to indulge their vices in private. After a chaotic day, Katy crashes in an upper Pullman berth above salty, hard-drinking Ivy and across from nympho Suzanne and married Eileen, convinced because of her affair with Ted that there’s a private detective around every corner. Next morning Katy finds Suzanne’s throat sporting a shiny brass hatpin—the same item that was spotted at the scene of Lois’s misfortune. Turning sleuth, Katy questions musician suspects from Jack (“Don’t call me Jacqueline”), a Communist and closet lesbian who proselytizes ceaselessly for both causes, to the Bliss sisters, bitter hangers-on from vaudeville. It takes two more murders for Katy to ferret out the clever killer.

Since this story first appeared as a six-hour audiobook with original songs by the author, it’s no wonder that Glatzer’s atmospherics effectively evoke the swing era. Though mystery takes a backseat to band member shenanigans and wall-to-wall banter, it’s still a lively jitterbug down memory lane.