My earliest filmgoing memory is of a bad guy getting pushed down the stairs in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. That shocking scene has stayed with me, leading me into a lifetime of exploring the dark visions of crime stories. It was only natural that my love of rock music, and in its interaction with other media would draw me to mystery writers whose books were fueled by their love of rock, blues and pop. "If not for music and movies, I wouldn't be a novelist," George Pelecanos once told me. "They have influenced me more than any author. I want to shout about it." Me too.
A lot of people know George Pelecanos from his work as a TV writer, but long before he contributed to The Wire and The Deuce, he was turning out great mysteries, most of them set in his hometown of Washington, D.C. These are smart, sociological thrillers that teach you a lot about life on the city's mean streets. What sets books like King Suckerman apart for me is how much they teach you about the way popular music—heard from car radios, boom boxes, and record store systems—defines people's lives. For me, one of the book's many highlights is a fierce exchange between a guy who, based on Jimi Hendrix's funky playing in Band of Gypsys thinks the guitarist should be filed under soul rather than rock because that was the direction he was going and a friend who responds, "What you think you are, man, the Amazing Kreskin... gonna tell me now where a dead man was headed with his shit?"
While out looking to buy drugs, small-time dealer Dimitri Karras and his friend, record-store owner Marcus Clay, stumble into a big deal gone bad, acquire some cash that is not theirs, and become players in a savage game of cross and double-cross.
As a jazz critic, I was long struck by the absence of knowledgable (and fun) references to this music in mystery novels, my second love. Then I happened upon a pair of remaindered books by British novelist John Harvey. A blurb referring to his police detective Charlie Resnick's devotion to bebop giants Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk sealed the deal. Harvey doesn't just drop names and titles in Easy Meat, he plays jazz critic himself: "It was a bad sign, Resnick knew, when he played Monk last thing at night, the pianist’s fractured attempts at melody obeying no logic but their own. A big man, as Resnick was big, Monk’s fingers stabbed down at single notes, crushed chords into the beauty of an abstract painting, twisted scaffolding seen in a certain light."
Fifteen year old Nicky Snape is found hanging from the shower in a local authority home where he is awaiting trial for his involvement in a brutally violent burglary. Charlie Resnick, Nicky's arresting officer, knows the poor, working-class Snape family well and suspects foul play. When the investigation results in a vicious murder on the banks of the River Trent, Resnick's suspicions about the case appear to have been well founded. The deaths coincide with a series of brutal male rapes in the city and Resnick finds himself in charge of investigations that lead to some startling and sinister revelations.…
You know an author is serious about his rock music when he names three of his novels after Rolling Stones albums. As much as I liked the Stones, growing up, my personal tastes leaned more toward the Beatles. But the more I read Scottish great Ian Rankin's Rebus novels, the more I gravitated toward Mick Jagger and the boys. When it comes to classic rock 'n' roll moments, you just can't beat the one in Let it Bleedin which down-and-out Inspector John Rebus finds solace in a Keith Richards guitar riff. "Women, relationships and colleagues had come and gone but the Stones had always been there. 'I don't have much,' Rebus thought, 'but I have this.'"
The seventh Inspector Rebus novel from the No.1 bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES. 'Rankin continues to be unsurpassed among living British crime writers' THE TIMES
Struggling through another Edinburgh winter Rebus finds himself sucked into a web of intrigue that throws up more questions than answers.
Was the Lord Provost's daughter kidnapped or just another runaway? Why is a city councillor shredding documents that should have been waste paper years ago? And why on earth is Rebus invited to a clay pigeon shoot at the home of the Scottish Office's Permanent Secretary?
Lots of books have been written about sixties pop culture, something I cut my teeth on as a music and movie fanatic, but few have captured it as well as Peter Robinson's Piece of My Heart. Named after the Janis Joplin classic, the book has Chief Inspector Alan Banks trace the recent murder of a rock journalist to the murder of a young woman at an outdoor rock concert in 1969. You might expect a strong dose of nostalgia, but Robinson, a Canadian with British roots, transcends the soft stuff with hard insight into what that era was all about—the good, the bad, and the sorrowful.
As volunteers clean up after a huge outdoor rock concert in Yorkshire in 1969, they discover the body of a young woman wrapped in a sleeping bag. She has been brutally murdered. The detective assigned to the case, Stanley Chadwick, is a hard-headed, strait-laced veteran of the Second World War. He could not have less in common with - or less regard for - young, disrespectful, long-haired hippies, smoking marijuana and listening to the pulsing sounds of rock and roll. But he has a murder to solve, and it looks as if the victim was somehow associated with the up-and-coming…
This novel by the author of Endless Love (fabulous novel, terrible movie adaptations) isn't a mystery novel in the strictest terms. But it's about one of the greatest human mysteries, Bob Dylan, represented by fictional singer-songwriter Luke Fairchild, and considering how little we know about Dylan, how can we not seize the chance to see him through the eyes of a great novelist? The novel is narrated by Fairchild's illegitimate son, who obsessively searches for his father after discovering he is a legendary artist. In an act of considerable nerve, Spencer punctuates the pages with Dylanesque lyrics.
A man’s impassioned search for his legendary rock star father becomes a journey of self-discovery in this masterful novel from bestselling author Scott Spencer
Billy Rothschild’s obsession with legendary ’60s folksinger Luke Fairchild could be considered fanatic, if not for the fact that Luke is actually Billy’s father. Raised by his beautiful, charismatic, former–flower child mother, Billy is a lost soul. Determined to learn something—anything—about his origins, he sets out on an illuminating quest to find and confront the father he always knew of but never knew.
Evocative and lyrical, The Rich Man’s Table is a moving portrait of a…
T Bone Burnett offers the first critical appreciation of Burnett’s wide-ranging contributions to American music, his passionate advocacy for analog sound, and the striking contradictions that define his maverick artistry. Lloyd Sachs highlights all the important aspects of Burnett’s musical pursuits, from his early days as a member of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue and his collaboration with the playwright Sam Shepard to the music he recently composed for the TV shows Nashville and True Detective and his production of the all-star album Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes. Sachs also underscores Burnett’s brilliance as a singer-songwriter in his own right. T Bone Burnett reveals how this consummate music maker has exerted a powerful influence on American music and culture across four decades.
On Draakensky Windmill Estate, magick and mystery rule. Sketch artist Charlotte Knight is hired to live on the estate while illustrating poetry under the direction of the reclusive spinster, and wind witch, Jaa Morland—who believes in ghosts. Charlotte quickly encounters the voice of a ghost and a sinister figure lurking in the shadows.
Charlotte takes refuge in Marc Sexton, a charismatic local with knowledge of Celtic magick—who wears a silver wolf amulet around his neck. With his dark secrets of the Otherworld and his magickal powers, they delve into a world of…
Draakensky: A Supernatural Tale of Magick and Romance
A murder. A wind sorcerer. A dark spirit. On Draakensky, magick dictates destiny.
The Chief of Police discovers an elderly woman dead in the Mianus River. There is a ghost who resides here and flings its words through the spinning air. River magic too, streams across Draakensky Windmill estate, conjuring a secret in Bedford, New York.
Sketch artist Charlotte Knight arrives on Draakensky to a bright opportunity. She is hired to illustrate the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke under the direction of Jaa Morland, the recluse spinster of Draakensky. Jaa, a believer in ghosts, instructs Charlotte to ‘draw the ghosts.’…
