Larry Karp, The Ragtime Kid

The Ragtime Kid

Larry Karp

Poisoned Pen, Nov 2006, $24.95, 364 pp.

ISBN: 1590583264

Brun Campbell loves to hear and play music. In Oklahoma city he listens to some musicians in a music store playing a tune by Scott Joplin and knows instantly that is what he wants to learn how to play. He runs away from home at fifteen and hops a train for Sedelia, Missouri in the hopes that he can get Mr. Joplin to give him lessons. On the way into town he runs across the body of a woman strangled to death and he takes a musical money clip that is nearby and a locket on her neck.

In town he meets businessman Mr. Fitzgerald who stakes him to a room at the YMCA and money to buy food while he looks for work. Someone who hears him playing music recommends he ask music store owner Mr. Stark for a job. Mr. Stark listens to him play and offers him a job on the spot. He also auditions for Joplin who agrees to give him lessons. When Mr. Fitzgerald is arrested for the murder of the woman Brun saw the first day he was in town; he knows the man didn't do it. The money clip which belonged to Joplin could implicate him and Brun in the murder. Brun decides to find the killer with the unwitting help of the townsfolk as he maneuvers them in the direction he wants them to go for information relating to the murder.

As historical mysteries go, The Ragtime Kid is one of the better ones. The author doesn't only write a good who done it, he shows the readers how the plight of the black man had changed very little since Emancipation back three decades earlier. Scott Joplin takes a big risk to be paid in royalties with his name as the arranger of the music, something unheard of in the 1890's. The protagonist has a touch of larceny in him that helps him get what he wants but he is so adorable, readers will root for him in spite of his faults.

Harriet Klausner