The RagTime Traveler: A Ragtime Mystery

In Larry Karp and son Casey’s welcome addition to Larry’s Ragtime trilogy (which concluded with 2010’s The Ragtime Fool), ragtime music authority Alan Chandler and his 16-year-old grandson, Tom, travel from Seattle to Sedalia, Mo., to meet pianist Mikey Potash, who claims to have discovered a trove of unknown compositions by Scott Joplin. Potash shows them an old duffel bag filled with handwritten sheets of music, notes, and revisions undoubtedly by Joplin and tells how he came to buy it from a Kansas City antique dealer. In his hotel room, Alan, who takes drugs for his fourth-stage prostate cancer, somehow visits 1899 Sedalia and Scott Joplin—hallucination or reality? After Potash is murdered and the duffel bag stolen, Alan, who continues to time-travel, and Tom go after the killer and the stolen bag. In the course of their search, the sleuths discover two branches of a family—the Nolands and the Nowlins—intimately and acrimoniously involved with Joplin and his music. Lovers of Joplin and ragtime will enjoy this trip to the past. [em](June) [/em]