SWEET MAN IS GONE

A blues singer turns detective when her guitarist’s death is ruled a suicide.

After one bad relationship with a guitar man, Maxx Maxwell has kept her distance from sexy, talented Jimmy Nashville. But when she arrives at his upper Manhattan apartment to pick him up for a gig, she’s stunned to learn that his body has just been discovered in the alley outside. Unable to believe Jimmy killed himself, Maxx keeps calling Stallings, the soon-to-be-retired cop in charge of the case, with contrary evidence. She discovers a tape and some handwritten music in Jimmy’s apartment that lead to a recently deceased country singer who led a life just made for sad country songs. When Maxx discovers Jimmy’s latest girlfriend, wrist slashed, in her tub, she’s even more convinced that a killer is loose and keeps bombarding an uninterested Stallings with theories. Meanwhile, her band is going through problems of its own. After temporarily taking on a guitarist she’d once fired, Maxx begins to wonder if he murdered Jimmy. A mysterious stranger Jimmy had words with at their rehearsal studio brings the case to a boil worthy of a New York summer. Maxx will need all her considerable street smarts and every lucky break she can catch before the puzzle is finally solved.

Maxx’s debut has a real feel for the bar-music scene and a gutsy, believable sleuth.