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February 17, 2002
The Bootlegger's Wife
By DAVID WILLIS MCCULLOUGH
THE JAZZ BIRD
By Craig Holden
IMOGENE REMUS put on an elegant black dress for her divorce hearing, but before she could reach the lawyer's office, her taxi was forced off the road by a chauffeured Cadillac containing her estranged husband, George. Then, as she tried to escape on foot through the rush-hour traffic, he chased her, caught her and shot her dead. George, who soon turned himself in to the police, claimed it was a matter of ''morally justifiable homicide.''
Craig Holden's fourth novel -- which intercuts the elements of a mystery story and a courtroom drama with a thick slice of social history -- is based on an actual murder that took place in Cincinnati in 1927. Imogene, the daughter of a prominent lawyer, had been part of the city's establishment before she married George, the country's leading bootlegger. The prosecutor in the case was 30-year-old Charles Taft, son of Chief Justice and former President William Howard Taft and brother of the future Senator Robert Taft. Although he had lost his last big case, against another bootlegger, Charlie was seen as a man with a bright political future.
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Baltimore Sun - 1/6/02
Craig Holden's magnificent The Jazz Bird should -- if there is any justice in the world -- find a large audience. It too is an inspired-by-true-crime tale with a whiff of insanity at the edges. Its plot also tunnels and explodes and unsettles.
But Holden is a craftsman, a most exquisite writer who manages a complex story line and a huge cast of characters with astonishing grace. Set in the 1920s, The Jazz Bird features bootleggers and betrayals and cataclysmic love. It swaggers and shimmers with a Great Gatsby kind of light. It's a murder story, a trial story, a profoundly moving and disturbing love story in which the greatest crime of all involves a startling crime of the heart.
The Washington Post
Copyright 2002 The Washington Post
January 27, 2002, Sunday, Final Edition
SECTION: BOOK WORLD
This Side of Paradise
Reviewed by Patrick Anderson
Craig Holden's fascinating new novel, The Jazz Bird, is based on fact: In 1927, a notorious Cincinnati bootlegger shot and killed his wife and went on trial for his life. Starting with that, Holden has conjured up a gripping and beautifully written tale of love, crime and revenge, one that -- quite consciously, I think -- offers us an alternative ending to The Great Gatsby. Is this what would have happened if Fitzgerald, instead of killing off his gorgeous, lovesick bootlegger, had let him elope with Daisy and pursue his trade in the Heartland?
George Remus is a poor boy who becomes a successful lawyer and an even more successful bootlegger. ("By early 1922 they were moving thirty thousand cases a month, but it wasn't enough. People wanted more.") He sets up shop in Cincinnati, both because of its proximity to the Kentucky distilleries and because of the endemic corruption that Warren G. Harding and his gang had brought to Ohio. At first he is a mysterious figure in town, a shadowy "businessman" known only to lawyers and bankers. Then he meets Imogene Ring, the spoiled, reckless daughter of one of his lawyers. The attraction is instantaneous. He is dazzled by her rich-girl beauty, she by his aura of sex and danger.
They marry and live like royalty. When Remus goes for his morning swim, "Fowler, his new English manservant, waited inside the house, watching and counting. As Remus began his fiftieth lap, Fowler hurried out to wait at the end with towels and robe and slippers." When they give a party to christen their new pool, "a twelve-piece jazz orchestra played on the far side of the pool room as teams of women divers and synchronized swimmers created balletic designs in the air and water." Gatsby himself could not have done better. Nor were we ever as privy to Gatsby and Daisy's bedroom pleasures as we are to those of Remus and Imogene: "She'd giggle, then, and strip for him. One piece at a time, slowly, across the room. She'd set that rule. He had to wait."
Remus's bootlegging empire, lovingly described, cannot last. He has spent millions bribing hundreds of lawmen (when he is finally jailed, the Cincinnati sheriff gives him a private suite above the jail and explains, "You put my two children through the university, sir"), but one FBI man, Frank Dodge, won't be bought and hounds Remus into prison. He finds prison unbearable and pleads with Imogene to do whatever she must to win his freedom. This leads her into bed with Dodge, who proves not so incorruptible after all.
When Remus gains his freedom, he is furious with his wife, who he thinks is plotting to kill him and run off with Dodge. In a rage, he shoots and kills her in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses, then turns himself in. The prosecutor is Charlie Taft, the youngest son of the former president. He tells the jury that this is a simple case: Remus lost his temper and killed his wife, and now he must pay. The defense says this is a far move complicated case. Indeed, Remus pleads insanity: He loved his wife, he says, and her antics had driven him temporarily mad. Holden alternates the terse courtroom testimony with leisurely flashbacks that lay out truths that will never reach the jury.
A reader turns the pages eagerly, both to find out how the jury will treat Remus and in search of a more elusive truth: Why did he do it? In time we get our answers: the jury's dramatic verdict, then the author's glimpse inside the killer's heart. It would be unfair, not to say stupid, to measure The Jazz Bird against The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald was a poet dealing in mythology; Holden is a highly skilled storyteller bringing history to life and having a little literary fun along the way. The Jazz Bird may not be a novel for the ages, but it could be the most literate thriller you'll read this year.
Patrick Anderson frequently reviews for Book World.
From January Magazine
The Crack-Up
Reviewed by J. Kingston Pierce
2002
On the pleasant morning of October 6, 1927, Imogene Remus -- the second wife of George Remus, one of the most successful bootleggers in Prohibition-era America -- stepped into a taxicab outside her hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio, and headed for a meeting with her attorney. She was preparing on that day to divorce her husband of six years. However, not long after leaving the hotel a black, chauffeur-driven Cadillac, with George Remus occupying its back seat, fell in behind the taxi and chased it as far as the city's spacious Eden Park, where it forced the cab off the road. Quickly, Imogene fled her car and ran out onto the carefully tended public grounds, but George was hot on her tail, shouting for her attention. When he finally caught up to his estranged spouse, he shot her dead with one round from a pistol.
Those are the bare facts in the murder of Imogene Remus. But they're only the starting point for author Craig Holden, who in The Jazz Bird takes the Remus homicide and the headline-grabbing trial that followed it, and molds them into the core of a haunting, vividly written and tragic tale of love gone horrendously wrong. Imagine an F. Scott Fitzgerald story as edited by James Ellroy and you get an inkling of The Jazz Bird's multifaceted allure.
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from MOSTLYFICTION.COM
Reviewed by Judi Clark DEC 16, 2001
On October 6, 1927, while on the way to the divorce court, the one time wealthiest bootlegger in the country, lawyer George Remus, has his chauffeur follow and harass the taxi in which his wife is riding. When the cars finally stop, he goes to the door of the cab, Imogene flees, and George follows and shoots her dead right there in Cincinnati's Eden Park. Remus, apparently aware enough of what he has done, turns himself into the police.
It is up to Charlie Taft, the youngest son of William Howard Taft, former president and the then Chief Justice, to try this shocking case as Chief Prosecutor. At first it seems that he's handed an easy win, a political benefit to his new position. During the arraignment proceedings, George Remus declares he is not guilty and can prove it was a morally justifiable homicide. Furthermore, George Remus will represent George Remus. Naturally, the state has no objection to this since they think they are being handed a gift.
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