Half-Blood Blues

Berlin, 1939. The Hot Time Swingers, a popular jazz band, has been forbidden to play by the Nazis. Their young black trumpet-player Hieronymus Falk, declared a musical genius by Louis Armstrong, is arrested in a Paris café and never heard from again.

Berlin, 1952. Falk is now a jazz legend, and the Hot Time Swingers band members Sid Griffiths and Chip Jones have appeared in a documentary about Falk. When they are invited to attend the film's premier, Sid's role in Falk's fate will be questioned launching the two old musicians on a surprising and strange journey.

From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris, Sid leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world as he describes the friendships, love affairs and treacheries that led to Falk's incarceration in Sachsenhausen.