New Orleans, 1918. The birth of jazz, the Spanish flu, an ax murderer on the loose. New Orleans, 1918. It is a city determined to reshape its destiny and, with it, the nation's. The war is ending and a prosperous new age dawns. But everything is thrown into chaos by a series of murders committed by the Axeman, an ax-wielding maniac with a peculiar taste in music. Detective William Bastrop is an army veteran haunted by an act of wartime cowardice, bent on redemption. Isadore Zeno is a jazz cornetist with a dangerous side hustle. Beatrice Vizzini is the widow of a crime boss who yearns to take the family business straight. Their ambitions carry them into dark territories of obsession, paranoia, and madness ... and in New Orleans, a city built on swamp, nothing stays buried long.