Rock & Roll Never Forgets-Deborah Grabien

Rock & Roll Never Forgets
Deborah Grabien
Dunne, Jul 2008, $24.95
ISBN 9780312379994

Legendary British rock band Blacklight is performing in New York City. Odious slimy reporter Perry Dillon tries to force the band’s renowned guitarist John “JP” Kincaid into an interview; JP prefers the ahole leave him alone even as Dillon snidely states he will write a revealing biography of the band’s members. Soon after JP tells Dillon to stick it, the writer is found dead in the guitarist’s dressing room.

NYPD suspects JP's girlfriend Bree Godwin committed the homicide to shut Dillon up; as the insidious reporter claimed to have information that will expose the scandalous behavior of JP, Bree, and the musician’s estranged wife Cilla. NYPD Lieutenant Patrick Ormand leads the inquiry while JP looks back at a quarter of a century performing with the world’s greatest rock and roll band at times in a drug stupor in order to figure out what Dillon had on them; hoping that will lead to the motive and subsequently the killer.

Dillon turns this interesting whodunit into an engaging amateur sleuth concert, as he rock and rolls his investigation while Ormand sees the superstar and his retinue as the prime suspect. Character driven with plenty of musical references, Deborah Grabien provides her audience with a three beat tale that is fun to read as Dillon does it his way.
Harriet Klausner