In 1954 budding blues virtuoso Waymon “Tornado” Fuller is executed for the murder of a North Carolina woman. In 1994 nomadic hot-rodder, moonlighting private investigator and blues aficionado Deke Jones stumbles upon Fuller’s guitar, triggering a mudslide of buried truths. Fuller’s innocence is one revelation. Another is “Shadow Hand Blues”–the last song he recorded, which Jones has never heard of.
An impromptu search for the studio where the recording session took place leads Jones to a small hippie town seemingly still enjoying the Summer of Love, where the psychodelic atmosphere turns from surreal to hostile when he begins asking questions.
Vintage Fender Telecaster in one hand, steering wheel of his radical Cyclone Spoiler II in the other, Deke Jones launches a one-man crusade to exonerate the infamous musician and find the obscure recording. The blood trails are 40 years cold, but neither corrupt good ol’ boy cops, sex industry sadists, nor fanatical pyramid-schemers can throw Deacon Jones off this case.
This investigative pilgrimage propels Jones right into the bloodstained fingers of a clandestine power elite Tornado Fuller called the Shadow Hand.
This is set four years after Fast Cars and Rock & Roll. While that book dealt with Deke Jones’ racing exploits, and playing in a band (some even call it “coming of age,” since he learns some lessons about women…and people in general), this one is a cold-case mystery.
A fusion of the hardboiled P.I. genre with whodunnit, Shadow Hand Blues also has a strong musical element. Deke Jones is now in a nomadic phase, and this story takes place in North Carolina—far from his Southwest stomping grounds.