The Rag Time Traveler

To think of the film The Sting is to hear Scott Joplin’s ragtime music. In the final Ragtime Mystery, a story that flashes back and forth in time, the focus is on a battered black duffel stuffed with unknown music by Joplin that has suddenly surfaced. Alan Chandler, today's top ragtime performer and expert on all things Joplin, calls this the most important find in the history of popular American music, and immediately flies to Sedalia, Missouri, with his grandson Tom to evaluate the discovery. Before Chandler can collect the bag, a murder involving alcohol, torture, and piano string interferes. The duffel is gone. He contends with his own experiences—Time warp? Hallucinations induced by his cancer-fighting drugs?—as well as accelerating and deadly quests for the duffel.