Slate Magazine
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Entertainment
64% Informative
Francis Spufford's new novel, Cahokia Jazz , is set in the 1920s in Cahokia , Illinois .
The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site , once the biggest in North America , centered around massive, thousand-year-old earthworks across the river from St. Louis .
The novel combines the intricate plot and burly action of an old-fashioned hardboiled detective novel with a dreamy, lustrous prose.
This is the first time I’ve written something with the shape of a crime novel, and the crime novel itself as a form is unforgiving in its requirement that you take the facts seriously.
Cahokia is the capital of a state that is part of United States , formerly an independent nation that joined the Union at the end of the Civil War .
Two of the three novels you’ve written have not only been set in America , they’re also about being American , about race and identity.
Your main character is this racially ambiguous detective, an outsider who goes through the city, bearing witness to it, which is also a common noir device.
VR Score
70
Informative language
70
Neutral language
26
Article tone
informal
Language
English
Language complexity
49
Offensive language
not offensive
Hate speech
not hateful
Attention-grabbing headline
not detected
Known propaganda techniques
detected
Time-value
long-living
External references
4
Source diversity
4
Affiliate links
1