Blue Bossa

It's 1974, and a washed-up San Francisco musician named Ronnie Reboulet has exchanged his trumpet and his heroin habit for golf clubs and a numb relationship with an understanding nurse. At his daughter's request, Ronnie picks up a trumpet again (then a bottle, a few joints, and, inevitably, a needle). In his uneven but lively first novel, Blue Bossa, Schneider makes us feel the mesmerizing power of Ronnie's rehabilitated talent and the thrill of his rejuvenated fame. The final hypnotic chapters are too brief, as the musician and the women who love him are beautifully seduced — and in some cases, destroyed — by the jazz life. B+