Crossroad Blues (A Nick Travers Mystery)

Where in the world can you find a real blues hero? You can find him in New Orleans, living in his battered 1920s warehouse and playing harmonica at JoJo's Blues Bar in the French Quarter. His name is Nick Travers, an expro footballer for the New Orleans Saints turned blues historian at Tulane University. Nick heads deep into the heartland of the blues - the Mississippi Delta, investigating a crime over half a century old. In August 1938 outside a Greenwood Mississippi jukejoint the most celebrated figure in blues history, Robert Johnson, was murdered. Some say he was poisoned by a jealous woman while others say the devil took him after Johnson sold him his soul at the crossroads. Sixty years later a college professor researching rumours of the discovery of nine unknown Johnson recordings, goes missing in the Delta. Naturally carious, Nick decides to retrace his last-known steps. Nick finds himself pitted against a host of strange characters, including an eccentric negroid albino and a slick seventeen year old hitman who believes himself to be the reincarnation of Elvis Presley. Neck-deep in trouble, Nick has to fight to save his own skin while at the same time try and unravel the greatest mystery in all blues lore.