The Ragtime Kid

by Larry Karp

Overview

Brun Campbell, a 15-year-old piano fool, gets to play Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" one 1898 afternoon in Oklahoma City. It's destiny calling. Though he tries for ragtime lessons, he's told no— "Ragtime is colored music." So Brun runs away from the family home in El Reno, Oklahoma, to Sedalia, Missouri, to persuade Joplin to take him on as a pupil. What Brun doesn't expect is to trip over the body of a young woman—he thinks at first she's a log and thoughtlessly picks up a couple of items before he rushes away...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781615951086
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Series:	Ragtime Mysteries , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	369
Sales rank:	125,517
File size:	819 KB

About the Author

Larry Karp grew up in Paterson, NJ and New York City. He practiced perinatal medicine (high-risk pregnancy care) and wrote general nonfiction books and articles for 25 years, then, in 1995, he left medical work to begin a second career, writing mystery novels. The backgrounds and settings of Larry's mysteries reflect many of his interests, including musical antiques, medical-ethical issues, and ragtime music.

Editorial Reviews

"Larry Karp found a worthy, though neglected segment of American music history to set a cleverly devised story of fact and fiction. By filling some of the undocumented gaps with a plausible tale, he retells the early history of ragtime, with its undercurrent of racism and business dealings. Along the way he provides deserving recognition for several creators of the art form, aside from Scott Joplin and The Ragtime Kid, Brun Campbell."

Director, The American Ragtime Ensemble - David Reffkin

Ragtime suffuses the very air of 1899 Sedalia, Mo., in Karp's sweet-natured historical featuring Scott Joplin and the fictional 16-year-old white boy Brun Campbell, who ignores the racial divide in his determination to play piano Joplin-style. Brun runs away from home in Oklahoma and stumbles on the body of a young woman just hours after arriving in Sedalia. He carelessly grabs a locket and a money clip off the corpse, but soon learns that the objects will incriminate Joplin. To protect his idol, Brun decides to find out who the real murderer is. Karp (First, Do No Harm) does a wonderful job of depicting a town steeped in music history and in portraying Joplin, but the mystery plot pivots on a point that most readers will find hard to swallow, and the identity of the killer comes as little surprise. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

A young man's obsession with ragtime leads him to his idol Scott Joplin, and into the middle of a murder puzzle. In turn-of-the-century Oklahoma City, teenager Brun Campbell hears a ragtime piano playing in the Armstrong-Byrd Music Store and immediately falls in love with the lively melody. Learning that the tune is "Maple Leaf Rag," by one Scott Joplin of Sedalia, Mo., Brun runs away from home, leaving a note for his parents. On the journey, he literally trips over the body of a young woman. He realizes she's dead, but his quest isn't slowed. Arriving in Sedalia the next day, he gets Joplin to take him on as a pupil, though it's a bit odd for the Negro composer to have a Caucasian protege. Brun gets a job at the Stark sheet music store, placing himself in the right place at the right time when old Mr. Stark's son Will decides to launch a music publishing business. He also gets a night job playing in a saloon, accelerating his education and his passage to maturity. His sexual and musical awakenings go hand-in-hand. Pulsing beneath Brun's coming-of-age story is the search first for Sallie Randolph, the girl whose corpse he discovered, and later for her killer. Karp (First, Do No Harm, 2005, etc.) succeeds admirably in making both ragtime and Joplin more compelling than his mystery.

Kirkus Reviews

"Ragtime suffuses the very air of 1899 Sedalia, Mo., in Karp's sweet-natured historical...[that] does a wonderful job of depicting a town steeped in music history."

From the Publisher