Viper’s Dream

Winner

For fans of Colson Whitehead and Chester Himes, Viper’s Dream is a gritty, daring look at the vibrant jazz scene of mid-century Harlem, and one man’s dreams of making it big and finding love in a world that wants to keep him down.

1936: Clyde ‘The Viper’ Morton boards a train from Alabama to Harlem to chase his dreams of being a jazz musician. When his talent fails him, he becomes caught up in the dangerous underbelly of Harlem’s drug trade. In this heartbreaking novel, one man must decide what he is willing to give up and what he wants to fight for.

‘Viper’s Dream is one Long High, sweeping us through Harlem from the 1930s to the 1960s on riffs of melancholy poetry cut through with the hardboiled beats of gangsters and their streets, leaving us hooked on a pure, true Jazz Noir Classic’ – David Peace

‘Viper’s Dream, with its African-American gangster anti-hero, is reminiscent of Ray Celestin’s jazz-oriented thrillers and similarly introduces real jazz greats into a fascinating melange’ – The Financial Times

‘Wonderful writing. From the first lines, you’re there. You can almost see sweat flying off the strings of a slapped upright bass. You’ve been listening to the music, reading the book, for hours now – and it’s still full of surprises’ – James Sallis

• A hardboiled crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem and featuring an eclectic cast of characters, including a Billie Holiday-esque tortured femme fatale and a gangster anti-hero marijuana dealer who refuses to deal heroin
• Action spans from 1936 to 1961 and brings to life the infamous Harlem jazz scene, including cameo appearances by real-life jazzmen like Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker
• Mixing violence, humour, music and intrigue, Viper’s Dream is perfect for readers of Walter Moseley’s Easy Rawlins novels and Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead, as well as fans of American crime fiction masters like Dahsiell Hammett and Chester Himes
• Published in French by Rivages in 2021 and originally broadcast as a popular 10-episode radio drama for France-Culture in 2019
• Author has compiled a 50-song playlist of jazz classics that inspired the novel (available on Spotify spoti.fi/3ouzJM4 and included at the end of the book)
• Jake Lamar has been a recipient of the Lyndhurst Prize (for Bourgeois Blues), a prestigious Centre National du Livre grant (for Postérité), France’s Grand Prize for Best Foreign Thriller (for The Last Integrationist) and a Beaumarchais fellowship (for Brothers in Exile)