Musician Evan Horne returns from Europe to San Francisco and quickly ensconces himself in the jazz scene. Just when Evan has settled in, he learns that his friend and former mentor Calvin Hughes, has died and named Evan his sole beneficiary. Now Evan must sort through Calvin's belongings, including some old manuscripts credited to Miles Davis. Was Calvin Hughes really the composer of these famous tunes? And just what was his relationship to Evan's mother?

Evan Horne, recovering from both the injury to his hand and to his psyche, is on tour in England, hoping to concentrate on music and not on crime. But his old friend, Ace Buffington, who's led him into trouble before, shows up with a contract to write a biography of legendary trumpeter Chet Baker. Baker died of a fall from the window of his hotel in Amsterdam in 1988. Whether he accidentally fell, or was pushed is one of the mysteries of the jazz world. Evan resists this adventure until Ace turns up missing and leaves him no choice. To find Ace, he will have to dig into the mysterious death of Chet Baker.
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Things couldn't be better for jazz pianist Evan Horne. Back on stage after an accident left him unable to play the piano for over a year, Evan's first gig results in a record offer from Quarter Tone Records, a small, but respectable label known for quality work. Not bad for one night back! But news of the murder of Ty Rodman, a sax player whose fusion of blues riffs and a rock beat created the "smooth" jazz sounds popularized by Kenny G, threatens Evan's music career, life, and relationship with his girlfriend. Scrawled on the wall above Rodman's body is "Bird Lives!" — a certain reference to Charlie "Bird" Parker... and the words soon appear again, next to a second corpse.

On a dark night in Pennsylvania, a jazz legend met his death. But now, in the heat and light of Las Vegas, the sound of Clifford Brown's soaring trumpet is coming back to life. Because Evan Horne, who knows all about jazz and pain, is unraveling a puzzle that reaches back forty years to Brown's last hours. Horne was called to Las Vegas to authenticate some recordings purported to be the lost tapes of Clifford Brown. But when a murder interrupts his listening session, Horne becomes the key player in a dangerous duet. Horne is pursuing the truth behind an audiotape that may be worth a fortune, may be a hoax, and may be just one haunting melody in a killer's murderous obsession...

Tenor sax player Wardell Gray died in Vegas back in the fifties — the apparent victim of a heroin overdose — but his legend lives on. Moonlighting from his job playing piano at the Fashion Show Mall, Evan Horne is doing a favor for a scholar by asking questions about Gray's death. As Evan circles in on a little-known history of a 1950s black jazz club, the heat, glitz, and pay-back of Vegas come down hard — with the power to swing, smoke, and kill.

Evan Horne, once a world class pianist, is now a man with a broken right hand — a.k.a. his "solo hand" — and a broken career. When his former boss, singer Lonnie Cole, asks him to be intermediary in the payment of blackmail, Horne is unable to resist. But trading money for embarrassing photos turns out to be complicated. Pretty soon the money is gone, but the photos haven't turned up. Instead, there's a fresh body on the beach. And Horne is looking more and more like a suspect.