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Jesse’s dystopian noir novel Grave Digger Blues is now available in an upgraded edition, Grave Digger Blues: 2026 Doomsday Edition, available now at BookPeople. This is the novella Jesse developed in 2013 through a series of spoken word/music salons in 2012-2013. The current turn toward darkness in current events makes this end-of-the-world jazz/murder mystery more relevant than ever. Order it online, or reserve your copy for easy pickup at Austin’s beloved independent reader’s heaven, at this link.

What’s the story? In the last summer at the end of the world, there’s no better guide to the mean streets than private eye Hank Zzbynx, a war vet haunted by the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. A hardboiled tale where druggy jazz riffs announce the daily body count of Hank’s contract killing business, a city in its death throes where mercenaries compete with crocodiles and grizzly bears in the killing profession and everyone dances to the “Grave Digger Blues.” In alternate chapters, we see this blasted world through the eyes of The Blues Cat, an itinerant musician pursued by vengeful cuckholded spouses and a soulless fixer called The Muffin Man. The paths of Blues Cat and Hank Zzbynx cross as Hank’s last case, seeking a missing husband whose corpse turns up in a meat locker after being the subject of necrophiliac orgies and his heart has been stolen, which prompts a cross-country hunt for rival redhead lovers and $500,000 in embezzled funds–a trip that ends in a surreal shoot-out in San Francisco.

JESSE SUBLETT, legendary musician of Austin, Texas, regarded as one of Austin’s best living writers, author of 16 books, including true crime classics 1960s Austin Gangsters and Last Gangster in Austin, is also an acclaimed visual artist. Every page of Grave Digger Blues shimmers with his dark humor, lyric flair and noir obsession. Check out these blurbs:

• “A dark fever dream, part noir, part stand-up, Sublett’s writing is apt to scare the hell out of you as it is to make you die laughing.” Reed Farrel Coleman, author of Gun Church
• “Grave Digger Blues is a nasty, raunchy, rude-boy romp that I totally loved. You’ll love it, especially if you hate the Beatles.” –W.K. Stratton, author of The Wild Bunch: A Revolution in Hollywood and the Making of a Legendary Film.
• “A wild roller coaster fusion of Sublett’s art, music and noir fiction.”–Abby Levine, artist
• ​”Sublett dazzles with this surreal noir escapade, studded with strange, unsettling compositions, intense and heavy on the boobs.” — Kate Walker, book critic
• ​”Noir and the end of the world, like peanut butter and jelly.” –Minerva Koenig, novelist
• ​”You’re onto something, Jesse!” –Christopher Cook, author of Robbers
• ​”A great, unique arena of hardboiled action, satire and emotion.” –Scott Montgomery, MysteryPeople, BookPeople

Thurs. 9/12/24 was Jesse Sublett Day in Austin, as per Austin Mayor Kirk Watson. The mayor’s official proclamation recognizes Sublett’s contributions to Austin as a musician, author and artist, declaring that, “Jesse Sublett was the front man and bassist for seminal Austin rock band The Skunks in 1978; and also a member of The Violators, bands that inaugurated the punk/new wave scene at Raul’s Club and changed the course of Austin music history.”

The full text of the proclamation recognizes that Jesse, who turned 70 this year, has for 50 years been a vital, multi-faceted contributor to the city’s music, literary and visual art community. He’s the author of 16 books, including his Martin Fender murder mysteries set in the Austin music scene, and true crime chronicles such as “Last Gangster in Austin,” published in 2022, and he’s a prolific visual artist, chronicling iconic scenes of Austin birds with acrylic on canvas.

The proclamation concludes: “Whereas, Jesse Sublett is an Austin music legend, one of Austin’s best living writers, a painter of iconic Austin birds, and, for 50 years, he has epitomized the Austin ideals of professionalism, passion, and love of nature; Now, Therefore, I, Kirk Watson, Mayor of the City of Austin, Texas, do hereby proclaim September 12th, 2024 as Jesse Sublett Day in Austin.”

Watch this space for upcoming announcements.

Jesse Sublett’s published works include critically acclaimed detective novels as well as true crime and works on culture, history and biography. His essays and features have been published in the New York Times, Texas Monthly, Texas Observer, Texas Highways, and the Austin Chronicle.

The Austin musician-detective novel Rock Critic Murders, published in 1989, was Jesse Sublett’s first book. These titles followed: Tough Baby; Boiled in Concrete; History of the Texas Turnpike Authority, History of the North Dallas Tollway; Never the Same Again: A Rock ‘N’ Roll Gothic, Grave Digger Blues, Broke, Not Broken: Homer Maxey’s Texas Bank War (with Broadus Spivey); En Vie En Noir; 1960s Austin Gangsters: Organized Crime that Rocked the Capitol; Esther’s Follies: The Laughs, The Gossip, and the Story Behind Texas’ Most Celebrated Comedy Troupe; Armadillo Headquarters: A Memoir (with Eddie Wilson); Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia; and A Hit with a Bullet: A True Story of Corruption, Greed & the Real Murder On Music Row (with Sammy Sadler).

LAST GANGSTER IN AUSTIN

LAST GANGSTER IN AUSTIN sold out at the 2022 Texas Book Festival: Jesse’s events at the 2022 festival were attended by overflow crowds of enthusiastic fans ( the book sold out during his Sunday event), for which he is extremely thankful and humbled. Saturday night’s Lit Crawl event, a return of the infamous Noir at the Bar series sponsored by BookPeople, was at Vintage Bookstore and Wine Bar on East 11th Street, with readings by fellow authors Meg Gardiner, May Cobb, Mike McCarry, Scott Montgomery (also our host) and the great Gary D. Phillips. Sunday’s interview panel in the Texas Monthly tent by writer Bryan Parker saw an SRO crowd, a lively group studded with certain people who had great questions for Jesse, including a former jailhouse doctor who knew Frank Smith and some of the other particulars. Thank you, Austin, and the Texas Book Festival!

SRO audiences attended Jesse’s July 6 High Noon talk at the Bullock Texas History Museum. The museum bookstore sold out. Next day, July 7, the conversation with author Kip Stratton at BookPeople was completely SRO. Jesse signed books till closing time. See photos on Instagram @jessesublett. Thank you, Austin!

In his Austin-American Statesman blog Think Austin Michael Barnes says readers “swarmed” his June 20 interview with Jesse about the writing of Last Gangster in Austin. Read a selection of reader responses and view photos of the infamous madame Hattie Valdes, whom Jesse  also wrote about in 1960s Austin Gangsters: Organized Crime that Rocked the Capital (2015).

Jesse writes about the writing of Last Gangster in Austin in Texas Highways online . Nice headline: “Author Jesse Sublett Delves Into Austin’s Criminal Underbelly.” Read it now here and find out the Austin diners and cafes where Frank and his hired guns used to meet and plan their devious deeds and criminal exploits.

Check out: Jesse’s interview with Joe Gross at the Austin Chronicle. Favorite quote:

Ultimately, Last Gangster is about what all true-crime stories are about (hell, what most stories, period, are about): power. More specifically, Sublett elaborated, ‘how power moves up from the very bottom of society up to the top. … Frank started making connections when he was in prison as a very young man. He knew the Italian Mafia from the junkyards scene in Waco. So he moves from junkyards to the prison system to the bail bond business, up into connections with county law enforcement and [the] criminal justice system. And he’s kind of blatant about it, in a Donald Trump kind of way.

In the Austin Chronicle, read Jay Trachtenberg’s book review: Ronnie Earle, Gangbuster: Jesse Sublett revisits Austin’s criminal past in Last Gangster in Austin. Says Trachtenberg:

Sublett constructs the story with a sharp eye and a hard-boiled flair. This stuff is his bread and butter, and although hampered in his research by the pandemic lockdown, he was still able to give us a gripping account of this true Austin crime saga.

Jesse chatted with David Brown about “Last Gangster in Austin” on the Texas Standard. The interview runs just over eight minutes…. The audio edition of “Last Gangster in Austin” has dropped. Listen to the sample at Audible.com. We think voice actor Mark Bramhall did a great job reading the book.

 Hollywood insiders looking for new IP to option for film and TV are reading about it on the hot tip sheet The Optionist, a Substack publication headed by Andrew Lewis, formerly of The Hollywood Reporter. Ronnie Earle and Frank Smith are “the ying and yang” [of] a great story that goes from the backrooms of Austin’s juke joints to the state capital and everywhere in between and features a colorful cast of hit men, hookers and a great crusading journalist — plus a Willie Nelson cameo!” Plus, he writes, “This is such a rich, rich world that someone could have a field day creating a show.” We 100% agree!

“Last Gangster in Austin is a “vividly detailed and stylishly written portrait of an Austin long gone by,” according to the influential trade mag Kirkus. The review calls out several choice, colorful lines about the story’s hero, longtime district attorney Ronnie Earle, along with the antagonist, Frank Smith.

Skip Hollandsworth (Texas Monthly staff writer and author of Midnight Assassin) writes: “A rookie District Attorney. A wily, backslapping multimillionaire bail bondsman. And one of the biggest criminal investigations in Austin history. Sublett’s book is both a riveting crime story and a character-rich study of Austin, Texas. It’s smartly crafted and excellently researched.”

Kathryn Casey (In Plain Sight: The Kaufman County Prosecutor Murders), writes:  “Once again Jesse Sublett proves that the Lone Star State’s capital lives up to its mantra: Keep Austin weird. Enjoy this romp back in time to the era when Ronnie Earle ruled at the courthouse and Frank Smith in the salvage business.”

Follow Jesse’s author and music news on Instagram at @jessesublett, and his art news at @jessesublett.visualart.