Joe\u2019s superwealthy-by-marriage \u201cGrandma B,\u201d whom he adores, has befriended one-time protection racketeer Arman Babylon at the exclusive LA cancer treatment center where both are living. The repentant Babylon hires Joe to find his long-missing granddaughter, Twyla Mann, now 38, and tell her the woman she thinks is her mother actually isn\u2019t\u2014a domestic coverup instigated by Babylon decades ago in connection with the disappearance and possible murder of a jazz singer, Dalia Shorts. It doesn\u2019t take Joe long to be threatened and beat up by the goons of Malto Lamming, a serial rapist and murderer who desperately wants to keep his past and present crimes under wraps. The case takes the detective back to New York, where the trail leads to Minnie Fulton, Dalia\u2019s one-time pianist, who\u2019s now the organist at the Ministry of the Divine Orgasm. At this rather…unique church, Joe is required to get naked like Minnie, the male preacher, and the congregants\u2014but, thankfully, not to copulate like they do in full view of each other. His sexy encounters are reserved for his free-spirited, long-absent lover, Leaf. There\u2019s enough plot here for two novels and, indeed, after going a bit flat midway through and then going off in new directions with added characters, the book has the feeling of two novels stitched together. But with his command of the scenery, his shoutouts to literary and jazz heroes, and his sly commentary on Black and white culture, Mosley keeps things interesting. The book\u2019s title comes from a Yiddish curse the mother of Arman Babylon n\u00e9 Babel was fond of, which translates as \u201cYou should be like a chandelier, hanging and burning.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe\u2019s superwealthy-by-marriage \u201cGrandma B,\u201d whom he adores, has befriended one-time protection racketeer Arman Babylon at the exclusive LA cancer treatment center where both are living. The repentant Babylon hires Joe to find his long-missing granddaughter, Twyla Mann, now 38, and tell her the woman she thinks is her mother actually isn\u2019t\u2014a domestic coverup instigated by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}