Bill Moody (September 27, 1941 – January 14, 2018[1]) was an American writer of detective fiction and a professional jazz drummer.

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Biography

Moody grew up in Santa Monica, California and attended Boston's Berklee School of Music.[2]

Moody moved to Las Vegas in the mid-70s and stayed 20 years as a professional jazz drummer.[3] He also taught at the University of Nevada.[4]

Moody lived in northern California and taught creative writing at Sonoma State University.[3]

Writing career

In 1994, Moody's first published novel Solo Hand introduces his Evan Horne character, and addresses music royalties and blackmail.[5]

Moody wrote Death of a Tenor Man (1996) while teaching at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. The subject of this novel is the mysterious death of saxophonist Wardell Gray.[2][6]

His third Evan Horne mystery The Sound of the Trumpet (1997) involves lost recordings of trumpeter Clifford Brown.[7]

Bird Lives! (1999) centers around the murders of "smooth jazz" artists.[8]

In Looking for Chet Baker (2002) Horne investigates the disappearance of a friend who has been writing a paper on Chet Baker.[9]

Shades of Blue (2008) is not a murder mystery, but instead Horne investigates what might be original compositions of two famous Miles Davis recordings.[10]

In Fade to Blue (2011) Horne teaches an actor how to fake piano playing for a movie, but is drawn in to a murder investigation.[11]

Mood Swings (2014) is a collection of nine stories, each providing a view of the world of jazz through the eyes of nine musicians.

Moody has written two espionage novels: Czechmate: the Spy Who Played Jazz was written in 1986 but not published until 2012, and The Man in Red Square was published in 2013.[12]

Moody wrote his 1993 non-fiction book The Jazz Exiles based on his experiences living and working in Europe for three years.[2]

Music career

Moody has played with many jazz musicians, including Jon Hendricks, Lou Rawls, Maynard Ferguson, Russ Freeman, and Carson Smith.[2][4]

Bibliography

Evan Horne Series

Fictional mysteries featuring jazz pianist Evan Horne.

• Solo Hand (1994) ISBN 1871033497
• Death of a Tenor Man (1995) ISBN 0802732690
• The Sound of the Trumpet (1997) ISBN 0802732917
• Bird Lives! (1998) ISBN 0373263503
• Looking for Chet Baker (2002) ISBN 1590585739
• Shades of Blue (2008) ISBN 1590584856
• Fade to Blue (2011) ISBN 1590588940

Other novels

• Czechmate: The Spy Who Played Jazz (2012) ISBN 1937495302
• The Man in Red Square (2013) ISBN 1937495450

Collections

Mood Swings (2014) ISBN 9781943402090

Nonfiction

The Jazz Exiles (1993) ISBN 978-0874172140

References

External links

• Bill Moody's website

На других языках

[de] Bill Moody