JazzJoe Trace in his fifties, door to door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, erstwhile devoted husband shoots dead his lover of three months, the impetuous, eighteen year old Dorcas. At the funeral, his determined, hard working wife, Violet, who is given to stumbling into dark mental cracks, tries with a knife to disfigure the corpse. Passionate and profound, Jazz brings us back and forth in time, in a narrative assembled from the hopes, fears and