“You heard about the dead boy?” The speaker was tall for a woman, looked to be maybe six inches over five feet, and had short black hair, curls encasing her face tenderly. Her tone was anything but tender. She had said that her name was January Queen and that she was with the NAACP. The organization that had been so instrumental in forcing the recent decision outlawing school segregation. Her eyes were a pair of sins, or maybe they just mirrored my own.
Me? My name is Jazz Jones. I’m 30 years old and have lived in Raleigh since my parents dumped me here with my Aunt Rose and her longtime lover and partner, Harry Malone, back when I was just a baby, because a child didn’t fit into their plans to be jazz musicians. They’d played the jazz circuit in Chicago, two white faces on a stage of Black musicians, first with Bix Beiderbecke, and then off on their own in a quartet. My aunt told me they’d shared the stage with Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, and many more
I was raised in a mixed-race household, went off to Omaha Beach in 1944, vacationed in Korea a few years back, and now I’m a gumshoe in the city where I was raised. Along the way, after I shot a man in a card game, I gave up liquor, and now my drink of choice is buttermilk. People would say that I’m a fancy dresser. Well, I certainly don’t wear the gray-flannel suit all the other cubes do. I live alone, don’t have a dame who cares about me, and have a small office behind a tavern called Sip Walter. It’s not much of a life, but it’s my life.
“Maybe we came to you,” January said, “because not only are you fair, but you have a firm grasp on what the word justice really means.”
And there it was, I thought. I was being asked to bring the killers to justice and expose the underbelly of seething hatred in my city, even if it meant offending my neighbors and inflaming the ire of otherwise good white folks who just didn’t know any better. And, possibly, break the law along the way. Whatever it took. Even if I had to dig some six-foot-deep holes along the way.
As I watched her drive off. I sighed. Looked up and down Blount Street. Raleigh. 1955. It was a good place and time to be alive, I thought. Just not for everybody. Especially not the dead.
1955
Series: A Jazz Jones & January Queen Raleigh Mystery, Book 1
Genre: Historical Private Investigator Mystery
Release: October 2026
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link
“Welcome to Antebellum,” the ghoul said. “You are the guest of honor.” Things are not right in 1955, Raleigh, North Carolina, and it will be up to Jazz Jones to get to the bottom of the murk and clear things up.
“You heard about the dead boy?” She had said that her name was January Queen and that she was with the NAACP. Her eyes were a pair of sins, or maybe they just mirrored my own.
“Maybe we came to you,” she said, “because not only are you fair, but you have a firm grasp on what the word justice really means.”
And there it was, I thought. I was being asked to bring the killers to justice and expose the underbelly of seething hatred in my city, even if it meant offending my neighbors and inflaming the ire of otherwise good white folks who just didn’t know any better. And, possibly, break the law along the way. Whatever it took. Even if I had to dig some six-foot-deep holes along the way.
About the author
Over the years, Cost has owned a video store, a mystery bookstore, and a gym. He has also taught history and coached just about every sport imaginable. Since age eight, his true passion has been writing. 1955 is Cost’s twentieth published novel, ranging from historical to crime fiction of all sorts. Cost lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. Saint, aka Danger, the four-footed canine, helps edit. Cost now spends his days at the computer, writing.