That sidekick is Joe Barrow, an adopted orphan and indigenous American who cannot speak the Anopa language. (That gives him the classic noir protagonist’s outsider status and resultant curiosity.) He and Drummond caper through this other jazz age, into the upper echelons of complex Aztec (yes, Aztec) organisations, while war with Russia in Alaska rages in the background. At one point we encounter Alfred Kroeber, real-life anthropologist and father of Ursula K. Le Guin (the novel is dedicated to his daughter).

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In a way, this work reminds me of Jan Morris’ Last Letters from Hav, an eccentric and overlooked piece of travel writing about a fictional country somewhere near Turkey. (Incidentally, Le Guin herself championed Morris’ sole novel and wrote its introduction.) Like Hav, Cahokia is utterly believable. Spufford’s book is not alternate history in service to grand ideas and high concepts, merely. It is also a rich fantasy world – at once alien and eerily familiar – lovingly evoked and made vivid through the noir genre. Like all the best imaginary worlds, it exists for its own sake and on its own terms.

That kind of Hav-like fiction/non-fiction bricolage has always characterised Spufford’s style, and here it arguably reaches a new zenith. None of the historical knowledge nor the many real quotations weigh down its story. There are more than a few twists and entanglements later in the novel and the ending should satisfy readers with the patience and time to savour an immersive murder mystery.

Light Perpetual, the author’s last book, skirted the theme of imagined histories with an elegiac grace. Here, we dive into it headlong. This time the approach is maximalist, filmic, audacious, unquestionably entertaining, without compromising on the intelligence readers expect of Spufford. With Cahokia Jazz, he is on the way to cementing himself as one of the most inventive and protean storytellers writing today.